Nature Abhors A Vacuum
by rukushaka
Summary: The head of the ATCU has been assassinated. The director of SHIELD is in shock and en route to base. Melinda May makes a call. Half an hour later, she's digging broken glass out of Phil's arm when Natasha and Clint arrive at the Playground. Nature Series #3
1. Extraction

**I don't own Agents Of SHIELD.**

 **Here we go again, guys! 10 chapters, 27k words, lots of delicious hurt and comfort and angst and friendship and drama.**

 **For TYRider. Again.**

 **Set during 3.09 Closure**

 ** _Nature abhors a vacuum; idiom;_** ** _empty spaces are unnatural as they go against the laws of nature; any empty space must be filled with something._**

* * *

 _1\. Extraction_

* * *

"Get down!"

Phil throws himself forward into a shoulder roll, hears Mack's pistol spit, hears a body thud to the ground behind him, all in the same half-second. Then he's on his feet beside the SUV. Mack fires again as he tumbles into the back seat and slams the door shut.

"Go, go, go!"

A gun fires somewhere outside. The SUV shoots forward, tires squealing.

Mack meets his eyes in the rearview mirror. "What about Ms Price?"

Panting for air, Phil shakes his head. It's an effort to speak past the burning lump in his throat. "Just drive." He reaches for the centre console, for the gun stashed in a safe box there, and the light falls on his bloody hand, wet and red and gleaming.

Mack's eyes flick downward and darken. He's a veteran agent; between the text ( _under fire need extraction_ ), the blood ( _so much blood, slick and wet and gushing between his fingers_ ), and the absence of Rosalind ( _Look at me! Ros! Breathe. Please breathe. Please breathe_ ), he'll know exactly what to make of the situation.

New gun in hand, Phil hunkers down in the back seat, staying as low as he can. It's almost a relief to curl in on himself, making his body as small a target as possible while he checks the pistol over methodically. The stolen gun he leaves lying on the far seat. His heart hammers in his chest but his hands are steady; even under the onslaught of adrenaline, his hands are steady.

SHIELD agents get the shakes trained out of them early. Phil's got twenty-odd years of field experience on top of that training. His mind might not be unshakeable, but his hands certainly are.

Even the prosthetic one.

"Mack," he says.

"Yes, sir."

"Call Commander May. Keep her updated."

He'll need her. More than ever.

SHIELD will need her.

"What do you want me to tell her?" Mack reaches for the overhead comm unit. His eyes don't stray from the road.

Phil wipes his free hand over his forehead. Feels the smear of blood he leaves in its wake. "Tell her we're en route. And that Rosalind Price — " the breath sticks in his throat " — has been assassinated by Grant Ward."

* * *

The adrenaline has worn off by the time they arrive at the Playground. Phil tucks his gun into the small of his back and slides out of the vehicle, legs shaky. He hardly notices the stares at the unexpectedly early return of a grim, blood-splattered director.

He doesn't know if word has spread yet. No doubt it will soon enough.

Mack is a steady presence at his side as they make their way to the common room. Phil moves like a ghost through the halls, dimly aware of passing Lincoln, then Simmons and Fitz, then a handful of other agents. May and Skye in the common room. Lance and Bobbi in the kitchen.

He takes the stairs two at a time, absently noting the lack of accompanying footsteps. Mack's staying downstairs. Leaving him alone for now.

Good.

All he wants to be — all he _is_ — is alone.

He makes it to his office. Crosses the hardwood floor in a daze. Turns, turns again, blindly seeking. For what, he doesn't know. For Rosalind? No.

She's dead.

His desk is just as he left it: computer, keypad, a coffee mug, a few vintage pieces. So too is the conference table with its tray of drinking glasses, the empty water jug, the stacks of manila folders from a recent briefing. The infamous axe is still on the wall.

Funny. He'd expected something to have changed.

His skin feels numb. There's a curious shivering under the surface, almost a jitteriness. He should recognise it, he thinks dimly. He doesn't.

His chest hurts. What is he missing? Oxygen? He sucks in air with an effort. It's a battle against the lead weight of his lungs, the heaviness in his limbs, but he manages.

It kills him, but he manages.

He ducks his head, stretching out the tightness down the back of his neck. Even his spine is sore. Every muscle throbs.

His gaze falls on his shirt. The world vanishes a white-out of panic. There's blood there. Too much blood, too red against the deep blue, too _real, get it off get it off get it off._ His pulse thunders in his ears. He rips the buttons open, tears the shirt off, throws it as far from him as he can.

It carves an arc through the air and crumples to the ground.

Something clatters at his feet.

 _What?_

It's the match box. That's right, he stuck it in his pocket at the apartment. And now it's here. In his office. On the floor.

Chest heaving, fighting for air, he bends and picks it up. Traces the words with a trembling finger. _Half Moon Pub._ The last word is almost obscured beneath a thick ring of blood. His blood? Rosalind's?

He doesn't know.

It doesn't matter.

Fire floods his veins. The box flattens in his hand, his fingers closing over it in a crushing grip. He hates it. Hates the box, hates the pub, hates the reminder of what he'd had with Ros, what he'd fooled himself into thinking he could _keep._

Who was he kidding? He'd thought — maybe — Audrey. Sure, she was a civilian, but she was kind and talented and beautiful and _smart,_ she had a brother in the Special Forces so she knew that there were questions he couldn't answer. Even when that question was _how was your day?_ and he didn't answer, she _understood._

But then he'd died, and she'd started moving on, started healing, and he'd thought, _well, maybe it's better this way. It hurts like hell, but it's better._

And this time… oh, this time. He'd thought — maybe — Rosalind. She was radiant and shrewd and hard-edged and, for all that, sometimes gloriously naive. She'd been around the block, so to speak. Awkward questions wouldn't be a problem; she knew the business. He'd thought that would make it easier.

He'd been wrong.

 _I always had one finger on the eject button._

Had he? Really?

 _That's because you're incapable of anything else._

Was he?

They had a lot in common. Too much. He can see that now. Both spies. Both heads of their respective organisations. Both with trust issues, because the only spies _without_ trust issues are very young or very —

Well.

Even the ones _with_ trust issues end up dead.

 _You were stabbed through the heart. You must derive sadistic pleasure in doing the same to others._

They hardly knew each other, but still ( _stupid, stupid, and cruel, and very stupid_ ) he'd let himself hope.

They hardly knew each other, but they knew more than enough to _hurt_ , to stab with barbed words, lashing out in pre-emptive self-defence. Now, he can only wonder if it was fear that drove them. If they were afraid of getting too close.

 _At least I didn't use the story of my dead husband to sell an idea we both know is a lie._

He can't speak for Ros. She's dead. But for himself…

Yeah. Maybe. Maybe he was scared of opening up, getting too close, of trusting someone again only to have that ripped away.

But they'd grown close despite that. Close enough to go for drinks, to have dinner, to sleep together. _Sleep._ Not sex. As veteran spies they knew the fleeting value of sex as a tool, as a weapon — and, conversely, as something to be withheld until the right time, cherished in the right situation with the right person. Sleeping beside someone was an act of trust in itself. In their line of work, guns and knives were more often bedfellows than people. The intimacy that it implied…

 _I like Ros. Whether she can be trusted is yet to be determined._

His chest hurts. Again.

He doesn't think it will ever stop hurting.

Hell of a time to find out just how much he really had cared for her. He'd tried so carefully to guard against it, to take things slow. To sound out the water before diving in.

Surprise.

Phil Coulson cares for Rosalind Price.

Cared.

Past tense.

She's dead.

His gaze falls to the match box in his hand. His lip curls, some indeterminable riot of disgust and anguish and rage and sorrow and revulsion and pure _pain_ churning inside him _._

Half Moon Pub.

They'll never go there again. _He'll_ never go there again.

Ros is dead.

Ros is _dead._

A ragged cry tears from his throat. He flings the match box away from him and clears one end of the conference table with a sweep of his arm. Incongruously, his mind throws up the memory of Fitz doing the same thing in the lab. Maybe they're more alike than Phil thought. There's a stab of visceral satisfaction as glass shatters, as splintered pieces of the wooden tray fall to the floor. It's not enough. He does it again and again until the table is clear, unsullied, a blank state to start over with.

Cheeks wet, chest heaving, he finds himself on the floor surrounded by broken glass and scattered paper. He's on his knees in a parody of supplication, a pale mimicry of prayer to a god he's not sure he believes in.

After he died, he knew there was something out there. Something beyond life and the end of life.

Now? He's not so sure.

He forgot how much death _hurts_.

He thought he'd learnt this lesson. After Ward's betrayal, after Trip's death. After Audrey.

But apparently not.

His arm hurts. It's a different pain from the exhausted aching grief that suffuses his bones. A sharp pain, slicing and tearing. He lifts his right hand, clenches it experimentally, and hisses as the pain intensifies. For the first time, the thought crosses his mind that some of the blood on him might be _his._

He doesn't know why that surprises him. Tonight he's been in both a fistfight and a gunfight, jumped through a closed window, rolled across a street strewn with debris, and trashed his own office. Any one of those things might have resulted in injury.

And he's been too numb to feel it.

 _That_ thought makes his stomach drop.

He needs help. He's injured and he can't feel it. He needs _help._

Behind the buzzing static, the blind shock, the blank haze of grief, one thought rises.

 _Go to May._

He goes.


	2. Medication

**I don't own Agents Of SHIELD.**

 **Set during 3.09 Closure.**

 **Picture set for this chapter, and for this fic as a whole, is at** the-hobbits-smial **dot** tumblr **dot** com/post/161922758209/melinda-may-calls-in-clint-and-natasha-to-help

 ** _Nature abhors a vacuum; idiom;_** ** _empty spaces are unnatural as they go against the laws of nature; any empty space must be filled with something._**

* * *

 _2\. Medication_

* * *

The quiet conversation downstairs comes to a halt as he rounds the bend in the stairs. He's walking no louder than usual — if anything, he's walking quieter — but his footsteps sound abnormally loud in the silence. Like the whole world is listening to him move.

It feels like the whole world is watching him, too.

He keeps his head down and his eyes up, ignoring the cluster of concerned subordinates as he crosses to the kitchen and rifles through the red cross cabinet above the microwave.

Where's the first aid kit?

There.

Behind him, someone clears their throat.

He doesn't jump. He _doesn't._

Okay, maybe he flinches a little.

But it's fine, they're going back to their chatter. Pretending to ignore him, his presence, his pain.

That's fine.

Phil grabs the med kit and turns back to the group. May's over by the couches, talking to Skye. He approaches from behind, moving quietly. Like a ghost.

Which makes sense. He doesn't feel human. He feels cold. There's no sense of the blood pumping through his veins, the beating of his ragged heart. He is hollow. A shell echoing with the desolate roar of the ocean. A husk carved from black rage and scouring grief.

"Melinda." His voice is hoarse. Gruff.

The rooms goes silent again.

She pivots on the spot, eyes wide and soft. "Phil. What are — " Her gaze flicks over him, assessing, taking in the spots of blood on his undershirt and the mess on both arms. "Are you hurt?"

How is he meant to answer that? Everything hurts. At the same time, nothing does. He nods and then shakes his head dumbly. "I — I don't know."

"Right." She draws a breath. Takes the kit from his unresisting hands. "You want me to do it?"

"Please."

"Simmons is a doctor. I'm not."

The words pass through the echoing silence in his head and vanish. "Okay," he says tonelessly.

Please, don't make him make decisions. He's so tired he could cry.

Oh wait.

It's not the tiredness that makes him want to cry.

May steps closer. Asks firmly but gently, "Do you want Simmons to do it?"

Phil just stares at her.

"Okay," she says after a moment. Her eyes dart over him again, taking him in from scuffed leather shoe-tips to bloodied head. "Daisy — "

"Yeah," says Skye. "I'll — I'll get Jemma, okay, A.C.? And Fitz. Back in a minute." She lifts a hand like she wants to pat him on the shoulder, but between the blood and sweat and developing bruises, there's not much clean surface area available. Her hand drops back to her side. "I'll be quick."

And she's gone.

"Over here," says May, crossing to the table and flipping a chair around. "Sit."

He follows the order reflexively, grateful for the steel in her voice. She unpacks the first aid kit. Enlists Mack and Bobbi and Hunter to rustle up hot water and clean cloths and a couple of towels. Starts wiping the blood off his arms.

The numbness is starting to fade. The shivering under his skin is growing stronger, a sort of buzzing vibration that reminds him of adrenaline. But it's not.

He knows what it is, and it's not adrenaline. It's not shock.

It's something else.

Bobbi wipes a smear of blood off his forehead. Phil sweeps a glance around the room without moving his head. Clear. The only people in the room are people that he trusts, more or less, and in the circumstances that will have to do. "I'm enacting Regency Protocol," he murmurs.

May's eyes rise, startled, to meet his gaze. "What?"

"I'm," he says. "Enacting. Regency. Protocol."

"What's that?" Hunter asks. He's standing off to the side, hands twisting restlessly in front of him.

"Are you sure?" May says over the top of Hunter.

Phil nods. "It's standard procedure."

She snorts and bins her cloth, now soaked through with blood. Reaches for a clean one. "Standard procedure went out the window when Hydra showed themselves, you know that."

"It's still procedure." Is she going to make him repeat everything he says? That'll get really old, really fast. He hisses as something pulls at his arm, and fights an urge to jerk backward from the pain.

"Sorry," May mutters. "There's something embedded in your arm. Looks like…" She frowns, probing with feather-light fingers at the soft skin on the inside of his elbow. "Bits of glass, maybe?"

That would be right. "Went through a window."

"Okay. I'll wait til Simmons is here to patch that up."

As if summoned by the words, Simmons flies into the room, Fitz and Skye on her heels. "I'm here!" she announces, like the brisk clack of her boots isn't warning enough. "What's the situation? How badly are you hurt, sir? Have you given him anything for the pain? What kit are you using?"

The room dissolves in a bustle of activity and quiet noise, _okay someone find me — I'll get some clean hot water, this isn't — Fitz, check the — hand, yeah, on it —_ and Phil doesn't quite close his eyes, the prickling under his skin won't let him, but he widens his focus and tunes them out until it's all just an indistinct blur of exhaustion.

Fitz cleans the blood off his prosthetic hand and checks it over, darting worried looks across to Jemma or up at Phil every so often. The black hand is pockmarked with dozens of tiny dents, some with bits of glass or wood or flesh jutting from them. Not Phil's flesh, he doesn't think. Probably the first guy who came for him, the one who landed a fist to his upper cheekbone that set his ears ringing. It would be easier to ditch the hand altogether — ditch the memories — but Fitz is already at work. He leaves it be.

Simmons and May work together on his arms, tweezers in hand. They set a high stool beside them and put a metal tray on it to hold the discarded shrapnel pieces. Between them they keep a running commentary going — _Looks fairly clean from here to here— Coulson, there's a bad patch under your wrist, can you turn your hand over — thanks — let me get this out from under his fingernail and you can disinfect it —_ while they pluck out the slivers of glass scattered from elbow to fingertip and apply disinfectant and bandaging.

Skye hovers, clearly feeling less than useful. She holds _this_ or passes _that_ on command. Chips in with the odd question. Bits her lip almost constantly and gives Fitz a run for his money in the worried-glances department and keeps her weight squarely on the balls of her feet.

Phil feels an unexpected flash of kinship with the two young women. It's another odd moment of realising that he's more like his team than he thought. Or maybe his team is more like him. He might be Team Dad, so to speak, but they all rub off on each other. Like a round-robin of traits and habits.

He's like Jemma in that he deals with stress by flinging himself into his work and staying busy.

He's like Skye in that he feels a deep desire, when faced with caring and loss and grief, to just _run_.

But both courses of action have consequences. He knows all too well that you can't run from your problems; nor can you bury them under a pile of paperwork. In both cases, you're pretending they don't exist.

They do exist.

They're all too real.

Hunter excuses himself from the melee with a self-deprecating _I know when I'm not needed._ He wanders over to the couches, folds his arms across his chest and turns his eyes to the tv displaying video feeds from around the base, chewing a thumbnail.

And then Bobbi steps around behind Phil, out of his line of sight, and that's enough to make Phil flinch, shoulders squaring, muscles tensing in anticipation of a fight —

"At ease," May says. It's not quite an order but not quite _not_ an order, either.

Bless her. Of course she knows.

He blows out a breath. Drums the fingers of his good hand on his knee. The twitchiness is perhaps understandable, but it's no excuse. "Sorry. Go ahead, Bobbi."

"Talk to him," May advises. "He can't see you back there. You'll have to tell him what you're doing."

"Mack, grab me a bowl of water." Cool fingers touch the back of Phil's head. Bobbi's voice is just as cool and calm when she says, "There's blood here, Coulson. I'm going to clean it off for you, okay? And then we'll see what we're dealing with."

He didn't _ask_ for the whole team to patch him up all at once, but despite the knocked shoulders and juggled supplies they seem to have decided on that course of action anyway. It would be too much for his overworked senses, all of them crowded around him, if not for the steady flow of information. Three streams of intel weave around him, overlapping, cocooning, and diverging again: good intel, trustworthy intel, intel meant to help him. It's fine.

And then Hunter straightens up from the tv, barks his shin on the coffee table, swears and says, "We've got company."

With a warning like that, it's pure reflex to arm himself; Phil darts a hand out and snatches a medical knife, thin-bladed and razor-sharp. The door to the corridor lies open as usual. He whips his gaze toward the doorway in time to see a shadow pass along the misted glass, with a second, shorter shadow on its heels.

He knows those silhouettes.

The tension drains from him, leaving him abruptly shaky.

And Barton and Romanov stride into the room.


	3. Fortification

**I don't own Agents Of SHIELD.**

 **Set during 3.09 Closure.**

 ** _Nature abhors a vacuum; idiom; empty spaces are unnatural as they go against the laws of nature; any empty space must be filled with something._**

* * *

 _3\. Fortification_

* * *

Phil starts to rise to his feet, but a firm hand on his shoulder pushes him down again.

"No," May orders. "Sit. We need to get the last of this glass out."

The words filter through the humming in his ears. He slumps back into the chair, eyes fixed on the approaching figures. They're dressed the same: combat boots, black tactical pants, black t-shirts under black utility jackets. No logos. Natasha's carrying a pistol on each thigh and an assault rifle slung across one shoulder. A backpack over the opposite shoulder. Clint's bow and quiver are in place on his back. He's carrying a kit bag and his sunglasses — the ones with the purple lenses, Phil notices, and thinks muzzily that it means something important, but he can't think what — are pushed up on his head. They've both got combat knives tucked into their boots and in forearm sheaths. And a full brace of throwing knives on their belts.

They must have been on a mission.

"What are you doing here?" he asks.

"I called them," May says, not looking up from where she's extracting the final shard of glass. "As soon as Mack told me the situation."

"Why?" He darts a glance behind them to the open doorway. Around the room. Still clear. Good.

"She thought you might need the support." Nat's words are soft.

"You were on a mission."

Clint grins, sharp and humourless. "We wrapped up early."

Phil nods wearily. The back of his neck is prickling again. Bobbi's stopped talking. "Bobbi. Talk. Please."

"Just finishing up," Bobbi murmurs. "A small bump, that's all. It's not even bleeding anymore. You're not feeling any nausea? Double vision? Anything like that?"

"No."

"Good. Low probability of concussion, then."

"How are you doing, boss?" Clint asks. The question is neutral; the look in his eye is anything but.

What's he supposed to say to that? Phil lifts a shoulder and stays silent, letting the interwoven streams of quiet intel speak for him. The tension buzzing through him starts to rise again, his gut knotting up. He feels like he's being watched: by who, he doesn't know, from where, he doesn't know. Another visual sweep of the room turns up nothing.

"Overwatch." Clint's voice is harder this time. He drops the kit bag to the floor. "Sit rep. Now."

He blinks gritty eyes. It's an effort to summon words, and that alone cues a warning in the back of his mind. "Alive," he says. Morbid humour rears its head. "Unlike someone I could name."

There's the predictable frisson of shock from Simmons and Skye and Fitz, the young ones who don't yet deal with death like this, the ones who have never seen _him_ deal with death like this.

Mack and Bobbi and Hunter and May appear unmoved, although he catches a shade of… is that disapproval?… from Mack.

They're veterans. They know what it is to walk with death.

Clint and Natasha, on the other hand, react in unison with a tightening around the mouth, a tiny contraction of the eyebrows. They know him just as well as the others do, despite the distance of the last three years. They might even know him _better:_ their years together on Strike Team Delta mean they know him _very_ well, albeit in a different way from May and Co.

They know the weight he gives to life and death, the responsibility he feels every time he pulls the trigger; they know that, in some way, he mourns the death of every person he's ever had a hand in killing. He doesn't take death lightly.

Which means, when he's cracking jokes about it…

It's bad.

Really bad.

 _Classic deflection tactic,_ his shrink would say. _Avoidance, sarcasm, black humour… you're trying to put a wall up, trying to block the pain._

Except his shrink wouldn't say it these days, because Andrew Garner, it turns out, is an Inhuman who murders other Inhumans — which is a weird hobby even by Phil's standards — and his old SHIELD therapist Pete Churchill died when Hydra came out of the woodwork.

He really should look into getting someone on staff full-time. Or a couple of someones. Between the Hydra takeover and the decimation of old SHIELD, the struggle to rebuild new SHIELD, the chaos with Gonzales and Jiaying and Cal, and now the trouble with Lash… well. Survivor's guilt and PTSD will be the tip of the iceberg.

They've got enough problems around here to keep a head doctor busy from now til Ragnarök.

One by one his crowd of fixer-uppers finish their respective tasks and step back, giving him some much-needed breathing space. He flicks one final glance at the doorway, another at the stairs, and sweeps a long look around the semi-circle.

Interesting.

They've arranged themselves in three rough groupings. At one end, the juniors: Skye, Simmons, Fitz. At the other end, the vets: Hunter, Bobbi, Mack. And in the middle, the ones he trusts the most: May, Natasha, and — in the very middle — Clint.

"Thank you," Phil says softly, with a touch to the bandage around his right wrist.

May acknowledges him with a matter-of-fact nod. "Are you hurt anywhere else?"

"No." It's reflexive. But true, he thinks. He doesn't _feel_ hurt anywhere else. Not physically.

Her eyes narrow. "Would you know it if you were?"

She knows him well. He takes a few seconds for a mental check and has to admit she might have a point. "No," he says again.

"Barton — "

"On it," says Clint, already shrugging out of his jacket. "Come on, Overwatch. You're with me. You guys got a private exam room around here somewhere? Office? Bathroom, even?"

"Bathroom's just through there." May waves to the kitchen. "Benches, showers, it's well set up. Take the med kit."

"I was planning to." Clint slings his jacket over Natasha's shoulders and bends to unstrap his boots. "Phil?"

"Yeah," Phil says. He knows. He starts undoing his own shoes and then pauses. "Wait."

"What is it?" May asks.

He can't believe he's only just thought of it. Shock's no reason to stop thinking. "Banks."

 _You told Banks about us?_

 _Yeah, I tell Banks everything._

"Banks," Skye repeats blankly.

"Luther Banks. Deputy Head of the ATCU."

"We know who he is," Mack says. "What about him? You think he was involved in — "

"No." Banks is trustworthy, Phil knows that much. At least as far as this goes. Ros had known him a long time; they'd infiltrated NASA together back in 2001 and had worked together ever since. "He doesn't know."

Hunter frowns. "Doesn't know… what? About Barton and Romanov?"

Phil hates it when his team spontaneously decide to become idiots. He seeks out May's gaze. "He doesn't know about Ros. I need to tell him. I need to let him know. Officially."

"You need to go with Clint," May says.

"The ATCU — "

"I'll tell them."

"But — "

"Did you mean it?"

He stops. "What?"

"Regency Protocol. Did you mean it?"

He doesn't need to look to know Clint and Nat are trading a long glance. They know the protocol. They know what it means for him, for his state of mind.

If he was less experienced, he'd be licking his lips nervously. As it is, he drops his gaze a few degrees. "I meant it."

"Then," May says, soft but with a core of steel, "go with Barton. Let him check you over. And let me do my job."

" _Your_ job?" Fitz asks, confusion clear.

 _Handover,_ Phil thinks. There's a mental flutter of pages from the SHIELD Training Handbook stored in his long term memory. The exact words probably don't matter. He pulls out his phone — still coated in blood from the apartment — and dials a line to upstairs. She'll need access to his systems. "Phil Coulson, Director, Sierra Kilo Juliet 08 India Uniform 7342. Alpha Papa Charlie activating Regency Protocol. Confirm."

" _Confirmed. Identify your Regent._ "

"Melinda May, Alpha Charlie Zulu 07 Bravo Romeo 7634."

" _Regent confirmed. Identify your Vice Regent._ "

"Alphonso Mackenzie, November Mike Victor 11 Echo Sierra 8929."

" _Vice Regent confirmed. Regency Protocol activated._ "

Phil rings off. "Done. All yours, May. Make the call."

The weight of the phone in his palm reminds him. He'd almost forgotten it in the chaos since getting back to base. Rosalind's phone has been a comfortable weight at his hip since he hung up on Ward; he digs in his pocket now and pulls it out, setting it on the table beside his own phone.

So alike, the two phones. But so different. His one: coated in dried blood and very much alive. And Rosalind's: clean but for a smatter of blood in one corner, and dark. Inactive. _Retired_ in the darkest, most euphemistic sense of the word.

"Simmons," Phil says.

"Yes, sir?"

There's not much point, but protocol must be observed. "Take some swabs from the phones. Blood, possible saliva, possible gunpowder residue, anything else you find. For our records."

"I don't understand."

How much does she know about what happened tonight? Probably not much. That will have to change, and soon. "It's evidence. Of a murder. Get it done."

"But not yet," May says.

Phil looks at her, reads the message loud and clear, and nods. "No, not yet. We need to talk. All of us."

"About what?" asks Skye.

"May will make her call," he says. "Clint will check me over. And then we're going to sit down and I'm going to tell you, on the record, everything that happened tonight."

Skye looks at Simmons, who in turn looks at Fitz. They nod understanding.

"May."

"Yeah." May's phone is already in her hand. She taps at the screen for a second and then holds it flat on her palm, half-turning away from the collective stare of the group.

Ring. Ring. Beep. "Luther Banks speaking."

"Banks," she says in greeting. "It's May. SHIELD."

"Agent May." There's the barest hint of surprise in his voice. "Just a second — Harry, give me a minute, it's SHIELD — what can I do for you?"

"Have your people heard about the situation at the apartment?"

"I got a call from the cops not long ago. Neighbour said they heard shots fired and sounds of a fight. Ros isn't answering her phone, I'm on my way over with a team now. Are you there already?"

May closes her eyes. "No, I'm at our base. With Price's phone."

Blank silence, and then: "The hell?"

"There was an attack. Sniper and a squad of six — "

" _Eight,_ " mutters Mack.

" — sorry, eight men. Hydra. Also," she adds off-hand, "it's not Agent. It's Acting Director."

Phil scans his group, but there's not a surprised look among them. He would've been disappointed if there was: there have been more than enough clues in the last ten minutes to tell them what Regency Protocol means.

Banks swears. "They took Coulson out?"

Nice to know someone from the ATCU cares. Phil meets May's gaze and twitches a wry eyebrow.

"No, he's here," she says. "A bit battered, nothing that won't heal. He fought his way out and we extracted him from the street."

"So why — "

"He's on mandatory stand-down. Twenty four hours. It's protocol in these… situations."

"And Ros?" Banks' voice is tight with tension.

May shakes her head. Takes a breath. "I'm sorry, Banks."

Silence.

"Luther. Talk to me."

A shuddering breath. "Sniper?"

"Yeah."

"There's no chance…?"

"No. Coulson was there when it happened. She's dead. I'm sorry."

He swears again. "Please tell me she at least had the curtains drawn on that blasted window. I've been telling her for _years —_ " He breaks off, breathing ragged.

"I don't know," May says, bluntly honest. "Phil hasn't debriefed us yet. It's on the to-do list."

Phil catches her eye and shakes his head. The exposed window hovers in his mind's eye, the brightly-lit room a beacon in the encroaching night, the bullet hole an ugly blemish in the expanse of smooth glass.

They'd been sitting ducks.

He should have caught it. Any other situation, he would have. But he'd been too busy staring at Rosalind. Too busy soaking in the simple pleasure of a long-delayed night in.

He can't blame her for not seeing it. For all her undercover work, she doesn't — _didn't_ — think like a field agent. She didn't see a potential threat around every corner, a weapon in every fork and car and candle. But for him… it's instinct. Or it should have been.

It's a mistake he thought he was too old for, too _experienced_ for.

A mistake he won't make again.

"Negative on the curtains," May says.

"I knew it." The words are a sigh. "She loved the view too much to shut it out. How's Coulson?"

"Shaken. Twitchy. Minor surface damage. Quickest way to the street was out through a window, apparently."

Banks hisses. "I know the spot. That's a decent drop."

"We've got a medical team giving him a checkup."

"Good." He pauses. "Look, we're pulling up now. Emergency services are still on the scene. I'll keep you updated."

"Appreciate it."

"And May?"

"Yeah, Banks?"

He lets out a strangled laugh. "Guess it's Acting Head Banks now, huh? Thanks. For letting me know." The sound fades; there's a distant mutter of " _Hell, Ros, what'd you have to go and die on me for —_ " and the line goes dead.

Phil scrubs hand over his face and drops it to his side, just in time to see May copy the movement in unison. He's always hated those calls: making them, listening to other people make them, receiving them. They never get any easier. Somehow it's better in person, when he can see the other person's face, offer comfort with a hand on the arm or a hug.

"Come on, Phil," says Clint, now only in tac pants and t-shirt. Barefoot, he rocks back on his heels and forward again. "The sooner we get this done, the sooner you can debrief us."

"Maybe leave the knife here," Natasha suggests dryly.

What? Oh. He's still holding the medical knife. He eyes it for a moment, debating with himself on a level far deeper than articulated thought. Maybe he'd be better to keep it close. The notion of being caught empty-handed again is… but no, he's safe here. He _is._ His team is here, _both_ his teams are here. Trust the system. Trust the team.

Besides, Clint has enough knives on him for both of them.

He prises his fingers loose from the grip and lets the knife fall with a clatter to the tabletop, and then stands. Status? Not bad. Legs are a little shaky, but that's to be expected.

"First things first," Phil says. He's not surprised when his voice cracks on the last word.

He steps forward on heavy feet, all aching heart and dusty soul. Clint and Natasha move to meet him. Their arms go around one another, strong and warm and familiar, and he leans into the old three-way embrace, forehead against forehead against forehead. They're simultaneously leaning on each other and taking each other's weight, propping each other up mentally and physically and emotionally and being propped up. It means more than he can say, more than he can even _think,_ that they're here.

The sensation of falling, which in some ways he's been feeling ever since he jumped out that window, stops. It's okay. It's okay. His safety net is here. He feels the difference in their hands where they rest on his shoulders: Clint's broad and gnarled from labour, thin gymnast's callouses all over and thicker archer's callouses on the pads of the first two fingers; Natasha's slim, deceptively soft, gun callous on the heel of her palm and ancient knife scar down the length of her pinky.

"We've got you," Clint murmurs, and Phil feels the conviction down to his bones. Feels the ground solidify under his feet. It's another moment of role-reversal. It feels _right._

A hand curls around his arm from behind, feather-light, with the strength of Sanshou and the stillness of Tai Chi. May. "Yes. We do."

More hands join them, Skye and Simmons and Fitz, and Mack, and Bobbi and Hunter, until he's surrounded, buttressed in a tight cluster of agents he feels privileged to call his friends.

And some of them are more than friends.

Not only Clint and Nat.

Delta's not his only family. Not anymore.

The two teams, old and new, have become one.

Phil breathes it in, deep and slow. Commits this moment to memory. The pain, the sorrow, the shock, the anger. The reassurance. Safety. Warmth. Solace. Love.

His heart aches with grief and gratitude. His eyes remain dry.

A minute passes. One by one, the hands drop away. Clint squeezes his shoulder and draws back, blue eyes steady.

Phil tilts his head as a thought occurs. They came straight from a mission. Straight from a hastily-wrapped-up mission. For him. "Have you eaten?"

Natasha laughs, low and clear.

Clint slides a look sideways. "No," he says to Phil, still looking at Nat. "No, we have not."

"We'll rustle something up while you get checked out," Mack says.

"I'll help," Nat chimes in. "Any preferences?"

"Tongue-meltingly hot," says Clint, at the same time as Phil says,

"No burgers or fries."

The DJ's burgers are probably still on table at Rosalind's. They'll be cold by now. Much like Ros herself.

A pervasive hollowness echoes in his gut.

"You got it," says Nat. She presses a kiss to Phil's cheek and shoves him gently in Clint's direction. "Now go."


	4. Observation

**I don't own Agents Of SHIELD.**

 **Set during 3.09 Closure.**

 **Written for TYRider. This chapter is dedicated to Samantha.**

 ** _Nature abhors a vacuum; idiom; empty spaces are unnatural as they go against the laws of nature; any empty space must be filled with something._**

* * *

 _4\. Observation_

* * *

Phil's had a bad night. But oddly enough, it's _Clint_ whose eyes go flat when Phil strips his undershirt off.

"What's wrong?" Phil asks, shirt dangling awkwardly from his prosthetic hand. They haven't had to do a full damage check in a few years — since months before New York, if he recalls correctly. If it bothers Clint that much, he can get Natasha to do it.

In their twenty years' knowing each other, he's never once known Clint to be bothered by nudity.

There's a first time for everything, apparently.

And then he realises _where_ Clint is looking.

Oh.

Chest. Dead centre.

Pun fully intended.

"Hey," he says softly, and lets the blood-splattered undershirt drop to the floor. "It's okay. It was years ago."

Clint doesn't move. "Time doesn't change what happened."

"No."

"You _died._ "

"Yes."

 _You left us,_ Phil hears in the echoing stillness. Whether it's truly what Clint feels or simply speculation on his part, he's not sure. He snuffs the words out.

Silence pools in the hollows.

"Are you — " he starts.

Clint holds up a hand, eyes still fixed on the scar.

Phil stops.

Clint steps forward on bare feet until he's almost chest-to-chest to Phil. If Clint was anyone else — okay, anyone but Natasha — Phil would be feeling a mite uncomfortable about now. As it is, he keeps his breathing level and watches Clint's face.

Nothing. Just that intent, shuttered look that speaks of carefully constrained emotion.

One brawny archer's hand splays over the scar. It's surprisingly warm.

Clint glides sideways to stand at Phil's three o'clock, at right angles to him. The hand on his chest keeps him firmly in place.

And now the other hand covers his back, where a matching scar lies. It's the entry wound, not that many people have asked. They all, doctors included, seem more fascinated by the exit wound on his chest.

He'd had years to think about how he was going to go. GSW was statistically most likely — either to the chest, centre mass, or a headshot. Possibly by a sniper, possibly not. Hand-to-hand was another option: a neck snap wouldn't be bad. Quick and clean. Other options had cropped up a few times. Bombs, car crash, falling from insane heights, drowning, suffocating… starvation, dehydration, being tortured to death… simple blood loss from any number of causes.

But no. He'd been stabbed in the back, literally, by an alien demigod with delusions of grandeur and an inferiority complex.

Clint exhales a shuddering breath and drops his forehead to Phil's bare shoulder. He's still got one hand on Phil's front and one on his back: the effect is rather like being sandwiched between two Bartons. Or rolled in a Barton burrito.

It's not unpleasant.

Clint's fingers twitch on his chest and settle again. The movement is too controlled to be random; what is he…?

Of course.

Heartbeat.

Mere _survival_ shouldn't be so comforting. But in their line of work, nothing is guaranteed. Not even breathing. Somehow, over the course of Delta's ten years together, it became their go-to comfort measure: feeling a pulse, listening to someone breathe, watching the rise and fall of a chest.

Clint, contrary to the codename, has always favoured touch over other methods. It's _Natasha_ who prefers a visual sweep. She'll sit and stare for minutes at a time without blinking. And Phil… he can close his eyes and hear the difference between Clint's breathing and Nat's. Long hours on comms taught him a lot. Without them having to say a word, he can tell whether they're scared or angry, winded from exertion or from pain, the difference between genuinely relaxed and drugged.

Which is not to say that they don't use any method at their disposal. Just that they have their favourites.

Phil darts an assessing look down Clint's body and back up. Breathing level. Hands steady. Feet planted, stance square. Eyes… closed.

Interesting.

As important as his sight is to Clint, there are moments when other senses are more deemed more important. It seems now is one of those moments. The need for visual confirmation has been superseded by hearing and, more importantly, touch.

Phil doesn't need to ask. Clint's ears are good, but even he can't hear a heartbeat with his forehead on Phil's shoulder and both ears free. He'll be listening to the whistle of air as Phil breathes. And he's obviously memorising the feel of the scar tissue under his hand. From the way his hands are spread wide, he's using the thinner skin on his palms rather than his fingertips, where years of callouses have all but deadened the nerves.

Phil had almost forgotten that Clint and Nat haven't seen the scar yet. As Director he tends to keep himself pretty covered up, but between gym sessions and post-mission locker room changes, his team have seen the scar often enough that they're used to it. It's been four years since New York, after all. He sees it every day in the mirror. It stopped evoking such a visceral reaction in _him_ a long time ago.

If he's honest, sometimes he forgets what he looked like _without_ it.

He forgets that the scar still has the power to shock. To horrify. Maybe he should call Natasha in. Let her look her fill, get it over with.

Clint's hands, front and back, are gloriously warm in the cool of the room.

No. Clint needs this, just him and the scars.

Natasha can have her turn later. Maybe when Phil's asleep, so he doesn't have to squirm under her piercing stare for long minutes — or hours.

Breathing even and slow, Phil lifts his gaze from Clint to scan the room. Clear. He expected as much. There are no windows here, and the only door is a) three metres directly in front of him, and b) closed. But all the same, the visual confirmation helps ease the itching at the back of his mind.

He knows how this goes.

The average person gets twenty minutes of adrenaline before shock sets in. His adrenaline ran out before he even got back to the office. Shock is always a complicated beast. Tonight, it seems, he can blame it for the creeping detachment and emotional paralysis.

But it's well on its way to wearing off now.

The symptoms of the next stage, as much as there ever are stages, are growing stronger. Certain instincts become ingrained in anyone belonging to their type of organisation. SHIELD, the military, police, FBI, CIA, it doesn't matter, they're all the same: they keep their backs to walls, they maintain clear lines of sight, they always know where the nearest weapon is and where the exits are.

No, this is more than that. The restless hands, the rapid heartbeat, the prickling at the back of his neck, every instinct screaming, the need to have a weapon in his hand, the need to constantly scan for any danger, real or imagined…

Clint's not the only one to develop hyper-vigilance after the death of a loved one.

He's abruptly glad that May called Clint and Natasha in. Oh, his team would have dealt with it fine — they've certainly dealt with worse — but all the same… he knows Simmons and Skye and Fitz aren't kids anymore, they haven't been for a long time, but they're still junior agents, and they still feel like _his_ kids. Maria Hill was right when she warned him, strictly off the record, to be careful of playing Dad with his team. Chain of command is one thing; family dynamics and inherent boundaries are another thing entirely.

And with May out of the picture as Acting Director and Mack backing her up as Acting Commander, that leaves him a little thin on the ground for support. Bobbi and Hunter are great, but he doesn't know that he'd feel comfortable crying on their shoulders. Besides, they've been a little too wrapped up in each other lately.

He's been meaning to have words with them about that, actually. Tell them to keep it professional. Or at least keep it to their room.

Next time it happens, he's going to march them down to the vehicle bays and make them clean the backseat of their chosen SUV by hand. Without gloves. See how they like _that_.

Beside him, Clint's head lifts from Phil's shoulder. His grip, front and back, tightens for a moment and then releases. He steps around face Phil squarely, eyes clear.

"Alright?" Phil asks.

A curt nod is Clint's initial reply. Four seconds pass before he says out loud, "Yeah. Alright. Just…"

"Processing?"

"Yeah."

"You can't kill him."

"Wasn't planning to."

"No?"

"He's Thor's brother — even if he is adopted. I wouldn't do that to Thunderboy."

Phil eyes him, weighing up the darkness in his stormy gaze. "You know, you once told Natasha that if you put an arrow in Loki's eye socket, you'd sleep better at night."

Clint's eyes drop a fraction and flicker sideways before lifting again. His jaw flexes. But he says nothing.

"You're not the only one with access to the recordings from the helicarrier," Phil says in answer to the unspoken question.

"Obviously."

"So you didn't mean it?"

"I meant it. At the time."

It's like pulling teeth. Phil hasn't seen him this reticent in a long time. "But?" he prompts.

"Times change."

Phil clasps a hand to his shoulder. The words rise almost unconsciously to his lips. They're maybe a plea, maybe an order. Maybe just a simple request. "Talk to me."

"I _am_ talking to you." Clint rubs a hand over his jaw. Scratches idly at the stubble there. "It's like I said, Overwatch. I'm processing. It's one thing knowing it in here." He taps his temple with two fingers. "Got used to the thought years ago. Of what he did. But _seeing_ it…" The fingers change to a v sign and sweep forward in a silent echo. "My eyes are different, you know that. It'll just take some time, that's all."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Okay," Phil says. He squeezes Clint's shoulder and drops his hand.

Neither of them say _I'm sorry._

Neither of them say _It's not your fault._

But the words linger in the silence anyway. Some things they don't need to verbalise.

Clint steps back. He turns to the side — which, Phil can't help noticing, leaves both of them with a clear line of sight to the door — and retrieves the first aid kit. "Coulson. Trousers."

Phil grins. "All you had to do was ask, Barton," he says, and reaches for his belt.

The checkup goes as well as can be expected. _Better_ than expected, if Phil's honest: it seems his trousers and shirt provided enough coverage to minimise the damage. Sure, there are the expected scrapes and bruises in weird places, but he's known since his first year out of the Academy that nobody, no matter how experienced, can keep accurate tabs on where they were hit during a brawl.

Win the fight and survey the damage afterward, that's all they can do.

The bruise down his left butt-cheek is a new one, though. Might have been from when Thug One shoved him into the wall. Might have been from the scuffle with Thug Three. Or from later, after he jumped out the window. Who knows.

Clint snaps a few photos for the record, gives Phil a helping hand to patch up the handful of wounds that need it, and then slouches against the wall and starts filling out paperwork. The grumbling under his breath is no doubt from habit more than anything. It doesn't sound at all convincing.

The bandages are waterproof, of course. Phil, scrubbing himself down in the shower stall, can't help noticing that Clint's eyes flicker up from the clipboard slightly more often than is strictly necessary for medical observation. Normally being under scrutiny while buck-naked would make him a) nervous, b) irritated, c) properly angry, or d) all of the above. But there are a handful of people in Phil's world — literally, five people — who don't count as _normal._

(Clint, Natasha, Nick, Melinda, Maria.)

Under the circumstances, Clint's checks are nothing short of reassuring.

All the same, Phil keeps his back to the wall, leaves the curtain half-open so he can see both Clint and the door, and notes which way the temperature gauge slides. He could have a spray of scalding water in an assailant's eyes in two moves.

The hot water works wonders to ease the aching in his sore muscles. He'd stay in here all night if he could. But he can't justify it: their hot water supply is far from unlimited, and the others are expecting him outside for the debrief any minute now.

He hates being on the receiving end of a debrief. It reminds him too much of his years as a junior agent. He'd far rather be the one running the thing.

That's not an option this time.

At least he's got May. She knows how to make them as painless as possible. The right questions to ask to get the intel in the quickest way possible. She appreciates efficiency even more than he does, which is saying something. And they've been on enough missions together, sat through enough debriefs together, that she knows what will make him clam up — like the least hint of condescension or questioning his ability to do his job — and what will help smooth the way — like simple, matter-of-fact acknowledgement of mistakes.

Phil's never been one for ignoring mistakes. Not other people's, and not his own. It's something he's always stood by: _you can't fix the problem if you don't know that it is a problem._

And boy, was tonight a problem.

A knock at the door heralds Natasha's arrival with a stack of clean clothes. She murmurs something in Clint's ear that Phil can't hear over the rush of water, flashes three fingers in Phil's direction, and retreats, closing the door behind her.

Three minutes. Phil rinses the last of the shampoo out of his hair and shuts the water off. He can do this.

The clothes, as it turns out, are a curious mix of Phil's own from upstairs, bog-standard SHIELD issue from the supply room/lockers/gym/lab/everywhere, and Clint's from his kit bag. They're also a mix of practical and leisurely. Whoever picked them — and if he had to guess, he'd say May and Natasha put their heads together — had evaluated his headspace with almost scary accuracy.

From Phil's wardrobe: black underwear, black tactical trousers, black socks, and black combat boots with a knife already in place in the ankle sheath. A suit and tie might be his preferred armour for day-to-day business, but tac gear is another type of armour entirely. And, thank you Melinda and Natasha, it's exactly what he needs.

He nearly shudders at the thought of putting on dress trousers and a silk shirt. His blood-splattered blue shirt from earlier is probably still lying on the floor in his office amid the glass.

No. No suits. They're the wrong sort of armour; useless at stopping bullets.

From the clothing supplies here at base: a dark grey hoodie, soft and warm and comfortably anonymous, with a matte-black SHIELD logo over the breast and another on the back.

And from Clint's kit: a t-shirt. But not just any t-shirt. It's one of his special Avengers-approved t-shirts, the UnderArmour sweat-wicking ones with actual lightweight body armour built in to them.

It's also purple.

On Clint, Phil knows, the shirt would be so skin-tight as to be uncomfortable. It's meant to be a base layer for his Hawkeye armour, after all. But it might not fit too badly on Phil; Clint is broader through the chest and shoulders than he is, not mention more muscled in the arms. It's not like Phil spends large parts of every day holding the draw weight of a hundred-plus-pound bow. The heaviest weapon he uses with any regularity is a grenade launcher.

The shirt, when he pulls it on in response to Clint's impatient look, is what he'd call _neatly fitted_. Not tight enough to restrict his breathing. Not loose enough to hamper his movements. Just comfortable.

He leaves the hoodie unzipped.

When they step into the common room, two bowls of steaming chili con carne are waiting for them at the kitchen table. The rest of the team are gathered at the couches, carrying on fifteen conversations at once. They barely glance over at Phil and Clint.

Good. The focus won't be on him for a few minutes yet.

May brings over a beer for Clint — dark brew, glass bottle, sealed — and lifts an enquiring eyebrow at Phil.

He shakes his head. The last thing he needs in his system right now is alcohol.

"Coffee?"

"Decaf? Thanks."

She nods and turns away to the gleaming silver beast of an espresso machine that lurks on the far corner of the bench. May might not _like_ coffee, but a barista from New Zealand taught her how to make them when she was undercover years ago. Her flat whites are to die for.

Figuratively speaking, of course.

Natasha appears out of nowhere, slinking towards them with a nearly-empty beer in one hand, a bowl of chili in the other, and her phone jammed between her shoulder and her ear.

"Hang on," she says as she gets closer, "he's here. You want to talk to him? Yeah, thought so. Clint, it's for you."

Clint points to his food, to his occupied mouth, and makes general _I'm busy eating here, can't it wait, I'm starving_ noises.

Nat eyeballs him, sets her bowl down, and holds out the phone. "Barton."

Ah. _That_ voice. The wording is purposely ambiguous. To anyone who doesn't know, she's ordering Clint to take the call. To those of them who _do_ know, she's telling him it's a Barton on the line.

There's only one Barton Nat would be talking to at this time of night after getting back from a mission. Which means Clint will _very much_ want somewhere private to —

Clint takes the phone and throws a look at Phil.

Phil jerks a thumb to the stairs up to his office. "Watch out for glass."

When he's gone, Natasha slides onto his vacated stool and nudges Phil's shoulder with her own.

They eat in silence.


	5. Interrogation I

**Regular reviewers, are you okay? I haven't heard from any of you in like two weeks!** **You're getting the email updates, right?** **Qweb? Fergumeister? Caseyrook? hjohn302? Let me know you're still alive, please?**

 **I don't own Agents Of SHIELD.**

 **Set during 3.09 Closure.**

 ** _Nature abhors a vacuum; idiom; empty spaces are unnatural as they go against the laws of nature; any empty space must be filled with something._**

* * *

 _5\. Interrogation I_

* * *

Clint returns to the kitchen ten minutes later, slipping Natasha's phone into her pocket with a murmur of thanks.

"Everything alright?" Phil asks.

"Fine." Clint darts a glance to the far end of the room, where everyone sans Delta and May are gathered, and steps closer on the excuse of picking up his neglected bowl. "She's fine. Just wasn't expecting us back this early. I said you needed us — didn't say why. She understands."

Phil curls his hands around his coffee cup. The warmth seeps through his fingers into his bones. "If you had plans…"

"No plans." Clint stuffs a spoonful of half-cold chili into his mouth and keeps talking. "If it wasn't for you, we'd still be camping on a rooftop in the rain."

"Glad I could save you a runny nose."

"The nose doesn't bother me. Keeping the guns dry does."

Phil grins. "I know the feeling. Not the most fun we've ever had." He pivots on his stool, setting his back to the kitchen table and facing out into the room. That's better. He can keep an eye on things, now.

"I ought to be thanking you, really. But that would probably be bad taste."

"Probably," Phil agrees placidly.

"You don't sound too disturbed about it."

"Because I'm not. You're family. Bad taste or not, they're just words." He doesn't look away from a dynamic scan of the common room. "She's dead. I can't change that. Getting upset about what you or anyone else says afterwards won't bring her back."

Clint scrapes up the last of the chili and sets his bowl down with a _clink._ "Someone said something to you afterwards?"

"Yeah," says Phil, resigned. Ward's words ring in his ears.

But before he can say who, May interrupts from behind him. "Save it for the debrief. Barton, if you're done stuffing your face, shall we get started?"

"Gotta keep my strength up," Clint says. But he dumps his bowl in the sink and heads to the couches, collaring Natasha on his way.

May lingers for a moment beside Phil. In his peripheral vision, he sees her watching Skye and Hunter fall over themselves laughing at something Fitz said. She doesn't look at him. "You sure you're up for this?"

"I have to be," Phil says.

"We don't have to do it in front of everyone."

"Yeah. We do."

There's the faintest hint of an irritated exhale. "Why?"

"Because they're our team. They were Ward's team, too. They deserve to know."

"It's not just Ward. It's Rosalind."

The fingers of his prosthetic hand dig into his thigh. "I'm aware."

"And you still want to do this?"

"Yes."

She says nothing.

"Think of it as an object lesson."

"In what?"

He nearly smiles. "Infallibility."

"No one's infallible."

At that, Phil _does_ smile. "Exactly." He stands, coffee cup in hand, and crosses to the lounge. The team quietens as he approaches. He ignores them for the moment. "Where are you sitting?" he asks May over his shoulder.

Her expression doesn't change. "Guess."

That's not hard. She has a soft spot for the brown leather club chair. He bypasses it, walks through the circle of sofas and barstools and armchairs, past the coffee table, and stops in front of Mack — who, true to form, has taken the most back-breakingly uncomfortable, straight-backed wooden chair for himself to spare anyone else the pain.

Mack looks up at him.

Phil looks down, unblinking.

Mack moves.

Someone snorts in amusement behind him. Phil doesn't look around.

He doesn't need to.

He'd know Clint's brand of humour anywhere.

Said pest is sprawled in the person-and-a-half armchair. Natasha's happily curled beside him, or half on top of him, to be more accurate, with her back against one arm of the chair and her legs swinging over the other. There's a new bottle of beer in her hand, Phil can't help noticing. As he watches, Clint steals the bottle, takes a mouthful, and passes it back.

In a coincidence that would probably scare Phil if he didn't know Clint so well, the armchair they're ensconced in is right next to the chair he just liberated from Mack.

Really, it's not a coincidence at all. It's just that Hawkeye has anticipated him with all the accuracy of a master archer and all the impishness of a little brother. Clint and Natasha know as well as May does that Phil prefers a debrief to feel like a debrief, not like a casual chat — especially when he's on the receiving end — which means he wouldn't be caught dead lounging on a couch at a time like this.

May settles herself in the club chair, shoulders straight, ankles together, tablet and paperwork on her lap. Phil crosses his legs and clasps his hands on his knees, the picture of professionalism even in tac gear, a purple t-shirt, and a hoodie.

They regard each other in silence across the coffee table.

To all appearances May is inscrutable as ever. Phil's never been one to be fooled by appearances, though, and he knows May _very_ well. He can see the tightly-restrained worry in the set of her mouth, the tiniest speckle of doubt pinching the corner of her eye, the bloodyminded determination in the line of her eyebrows. She's worried for him; she's not sure this is the best course of action — for him or for the team? he wonders, and has to admit he doesn't know — but she'll follow his lead. Once set on a course, nothing and nobody can turn her from it.

And she's set on this course.

Or she will be in another four seconds.

To all appearances, Phil knows, he's as inscrutable in his own way as she is. She hides behind a mask of cold indifference; he throws up a bulwark of bland amiability.

 _Nothing important here,_ says her face. _Just a tiny emotionless Asian lady._

 _Nothing important here,_ says his. _Just a middle-aged white man in a suit._

They're spies. Trust doesn't come easy.

But when they _do_ trust…

Well. It means a lot.

So he breathes, and on the exhale he lets the mask drop. Not completely, but enough.

Enough to convey a fraction of the anguish he feels. Enough to convey his certainty that this _is_ the right course of action, and his bone-deep trust in May's ability to do the job — both as a Director and as a friend.

He turns his right hand palm up and gestures to May. _Your move._

Her jaw moves and then stills. Biting the inside of her lower lip, he knows, where nobody can see it. Decades ago, she pegged his eye-flicker when he lies; but two can play at that game. The lip-biting is a subtle tell. She doesn't fall back on it often.

She slips her phone from her pocket and sets it on the polished wood of the coffee table.

And there's the four seconds gone.

Her mind is made up.

They're doing this.

"Ready?" she asks.

Hello, protocol. Phil reaches across and pinches the ballpoint pen out of Clint's hip pocket. Depending on how intense the debrief is, he might need it. "Ready," he confirms.

There's no stalling now. May reaches behind her chair with brisk movements and produces a black bag which, it turns out, holds the video camera he thought was upstairs. In ten seconds flat she's got it set up on the tripod, aimed at Phil's chair, and recording.

Then, because she's May and she always has a backup, she activates her phone and starts recording their audio on that, too.

"The time is 21:38," she says for the record, "on Friday 22nd of January, 2016. Now conducting a debrief regarding the assassination of Rosalind Price, head of the Advanced Threat Containment Unit, by Grant Douglas Ward, former SHIELD agent, currently with Hydra, earlier this evening at approximately 19:55. Debrief primary is myself, Acting Director Melinda May. Debrief secondaries are Acting Commander Alphonso Mackenzie and Agents Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov, and Barbara Morse. Also present are Agents Lance Hunter, Daisy Johnson, Jemma Simmons and Leopold Fitz. Debrief subject — " she pauses for breath, "— is Agent Phillip Coulson, who was present at the time and place of the assassination. Agent Coulson, please state your name and ID number for the record."

Phil could do this in his sleep. But he's too drained to summon even a hint of sarcasm. His voice is flat when he says, "Phillip J. Coulson, Sierra Kilo Juliet 08 India Uniform 7342."

"Thank you." She pauses for half a second. He can just see her weighing up her options. Debating which route to start them out on. Debriefs are fairly formulaic, but everyone has their own style. Any interrogator worth their salt — and May is most definitely worth hers — knows how to play the system to get the results they want.

He's glad she on his side.

If Phil was debrief primary tonight, he'd probably lead with a simple _tell me what happened_. But then, if he was primary, he wouldn't be the subject — and he knows as well as anyone that subjects as well as interrogators require… flexibility.

If he was questioning himself, he's not quite sure what he'd say. Something short, probably. Simultaneously sympathetic and efficient. No matter what side of the table he's on, he doesn't want to draw it out any longer than he has to.

Not unless he _really_ dislikes the person he's interviewing.

And he doesn't dislike himself. Not usually.

"Agent Coulson," says May. Her voice is… not soft, exactly… but it's perilously close to it for being a) Melinda May post-Bahrain and b) an on-the-record debrief in front of their entire team.

There's a certain comfort in formality. "Yes, Agent May?"

"How did Rosalind Price die?"

Verbal cues can be inextricably linked to memories. He knows this. He doesn't have to close his eyes to see again the initial spray of arterial blood. To hear the sound of shattering glass.

Contrary to popular belief, it's not so much a _crack_ as a _tinkle._

"GSW to the throat," Phil says, looking at May without actually seeing her. "Gun shot wound from a sniper rife. Through-and-through. The bullet's probably still imbedded in the wall of the apartment."

"Can you expound on that?"

Of course he can. He knows what May's really asking: _don't tell us more than you can handle. I don't want to make this harder for you than it already is._ He also knows that he could give her a commentary of the entire evening, every word said, every shot fired, the trajectory he went out the window at, and it wouldn't make a difference to how he's feeling about tonight.

It's already been a bad night. Might as well make the most of it. Things can only get better from here, right?

"Yes," he says. "I can." He tucks the pen behind his ear, leaving his hands free to describe the scene with gestures just as much as with words.

"We were sitting across from each other at the table. The window — here — three by four metres, facing west. Fully exposed. No blinds. Curtains weren't drawn. Plain glass. No reinforcing. The room was fully lit and it was dark outside. Would've been an easy shot."

He can't deny that he's angry at himself for that, but now's not the time.

"Ms. Price — " _refuge in formality,_ he thinks drily "— was sitting down. The shot came through at an angle, hit her carotid artery if the blood spray was anything to judge by, and carried on through, exiting out the other side of her neck and presumably lodging the bullet in the wall behind her. The hole in the glass was, at a guess, one point three metres high. Her chair was four metres from the window, the entry wound would have been about a metre up from the floor. Hydra's budget must be hurting, 'cause that trajectory with that much drop across that distance is nothing special, which means he used an off-the-shelf rifle. They use pretty much the same gear as we do. SOP would be Winchester .308 lead slugs."

The rest is a simple case of trigonometry. "Extrapolating from that and accounting for the velocity loss from the window, Ward was six blocks away to the west, four or maybe five floors up. There's an apartment block in a prime location, I'd say he was either in room 407 or 408. But," he finishes, "I could be wrong."

He ignores Skye's blatantly dropped jaw. Yeah, he went to the Academy of Communications. He can speak six languages fluently, four rather less fluently, and ask where the bathroom is in another nine. But he also spent ten years in the field with Hawkeye, four with Black Widow, and something like thirteen, off and on, with Skye's own S.O., one Melinda May. All three of the above have an unhealthy love of ballistics reports.

And they're generally up for a long-distance shooting contest.

Clint always wins.

"And Ms. Price?" May asks.

Phil frowns. "She died."

"Did she say anything before she died?"

"No."

"She didn't indicate that she knew anything about the attack or why Hydra wanted her dead?"

"No." The memory of Ros's blood-slicked skin floats before his eyes. "She had maybe ten seconds between getting shot and dying. She spent those ten seconds — " he gulps air but it doesn't seem to make a difference, he still feels winded, breathless, "— suffocating on her own blood. Trying _and failing_ to breathe. She bled out. In my arms."

May nods, the brisk movement at odds with the gentleness in her eyes. "Okay."

Fitz darts a sideways look at Simmons. Simmons passes the look to Skye, mouth pulling down in a grimace. Even Bobbi and Hunter don't look impressed with how May's handling this.

They think May's going about this wrong, being too harsh, pressing for details. But May knows how Phil works. She knows that he microanalyses everything, that the best way to help him at the start of a debrief is to facilitate the sharing of those tiny details, to get them out of the hazard zone that is his mind and move them to somewhere safe — like the collective ears of whoever's listening in on the debrief. Then he can move on to the overarching stuff like tactics and motivations and counter-moves and tangled human _emotion._

"Look," Phil says, not caring that his voice is shaking, "throat-shots aren't designed for interrogation. They're designed for a quick, messy death. Shock value. You know the biology of what happens, right?"

May's left eyebrow lifts a couple of degrees. "You can tell me if you want." _If it'll help,_ she means.

It will.

He takes that offering gratefully and launches into a clinical explanation of the physical effects of a through-shot to the carotid artery, using words like _arterial spray_ and _haematic_ _asphyxiation_ and _irreparable damage_ in relation to other words like _vocal chords_ and _spinal column_ and _trachea._ It's only three minutes, three and a half at most, but the level of detail is worthy of Doctor Jemma Simmons herself. By the end of it, half his team look like they're about to throw up.

Even Hunter's not looking too good.

For a former merc, he has a terrible stomach for this sort of thing.

Phil's really going to have to do something about that. Hunter could be a good agent if he could just learn to a) follow the damn orders and b) control his gut.

Mack and Bobbi look at each other.

"You know," Mack says, "I'm not sure this line of questioning is the best thing, uh, considering Agent Coulson's… relationship… with Ms. Price."

May stills. Her eyes don't move from Phil's. "In what way?" she says evenly.

"Most debriefs don't start with the subject giving a ballistics report on the victim," Bobbi says. "Especially when it's regarding an assassination, the subject is the Director of SHIELD, and the victim was the subject's…"

Phil turns in unison with May to stare unblinkingly at the two _Iliad_ agents.

"Friend," Bobbi finishes weakly.

Clint snorts.

Phil holds up a finger to forestall whatever smart comment Hawkeye is about to make. "Thank you for your concern, Agent Morse, Acting Commander Mackenzie, but Acting Director May has carte blanche to conduct this briefing in whatever way she deems fit."

"Did it help?" May asks, turning back to Phil.

"Yeah."

She makes a _go on_ gesture.

"You know me. I was a history major. It's all about the details, but sometimes all they do is fog up the lens."

"Your lens is clear?"

"Sixty percent decrease in mental static. Maybe sixty five."

"Ready to move on?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Drink your coffee — " she nods to the mug of coffee on the table, which he'd clean forgotten about, "— and then tell me how you knew it was Grant Ward who assassinated Rosalind Price."


	6. Interrogation II

**I don't own Agents Of SHIELD.**

 **Set during 3.09 Closure.**

 ** _Nature abhors a vacuum; idiom; empty spaces are unnatural as they go against the laws of nature; any empty space must be filled with something._**

* * *

 _6\. Interrogation II_

* * *

By some miracle, his coffee's still as piping hot as it was when May first made it. Phil wraps his fingers around the rust-red porcelain and sips gratefully, and then realises.

Ah. It's _that_ mug. The one with the self-heating circuitry built into the walls.

Ergo, not a miracle after. Or at least not an Act-Of-God miracle. Just a normal everyday man-made miracle, also known as _science._ He lifts his cup in silent salute to Fitz, who made the mug, and May, who made the coffee, and drinks again.

It's _very_ good coffee.

"You know Ward was behind the sniper rifle," he says.

"Yes," says May, "because you told me. But you haven't said how _you_ knew, which means — "

"I didn't?"

"What?"

"I didn't tell you?" He was sure he'd told her.

"No. You didn't."

"Huh. I could've sworn I had."

"Well you didn't. All I'm going on is what Mack passed along when you two were on your way in. Which means at this point in time it's basically — "

"Conjecture," he says. "Right."

She fixes him with a look that's either patient or long-suffering or maybe both, he can't quite tell.

"Where's Ros's phone?" he asks.

"Simmons took it. To get the DNA swabs."

Phil scratches the inside corner of his eye, takes a final sip of coffee, and puts the mug down on the table. The wonderful thing about a self-heating mug is that he can take as long he likes to drink it. No more gulping down a scalding drink on his way out the door, and no more half-full cups of cold coffee lying around the place.

When he turns to Simmons, she's already pulling the phone out of her pocket. Newly cleaned, he notes. She slides it across the table to him.

He reaches for it. Crimson blood flashes before his eyes. It's bright and wet and _everywhere_ — on his fingers and Rosalind's neck and the phone…

His hand halts in midair, shaking.

Phil blinks. Clenches his eyes shut. Forces the after-images back. They're not real. They're not _here_. They're a memory. Only a memory.

When his breathing has settled, he opens his eyes and takes the phone, ignoring the circle of concerned eyes. It's the work of moments to open up the list of calls and scroll to the most recent.

 _Blocked number._ Why is he not surprised?

He doesn't bother ringing it. Ward will have dumped the burner phone by now. He navigates back out to the menu and then to the system records. His movements aren't so much from conscious thought as from muscle memory; he can do this, but if anyone asked him to walk them through the process, he'd be sunk.

"Damn," he mutters when the screen comes up blank.

"What is it?" May asks.

"I forgot she doesn't use our tech systems."

Questioning eyebrow.

"Didn't, I mean. Past tense."

Two degree drop.

"Would've been easier if she had. All our calls are recorded and encrypted, I could have just played it back to you. But as it is… " He blows out a breath. "That'll teach me to depend on modern technology."

"I wasn't aware that you did," Natasha mutters. "You want everything in hard copy — and duplicate, at that."

Phil rolls his eyes at her.

She offers him an lazy smile and stretches, catlike, where she's draped across Clint's knees. "Just saying."

"Thank you for your input, Agent Romanov."

"You're welcome, Agent Coulson."

Clint laughs lowly. At a nudge from Nat he slips the knife he's been fiddling with back into its sheath and reaches for her boots. On the far side of their armchair, Simmons looks curious and Fitz halfway to disgusted as Clint removes Natasha's boots and socks briskly, revealing pale bare feet. Her toenails are painted a deep shade of crimson.

Both disgust and curiosity morph into comprehension when he shoves her tac pants up to mid-shin and starts massaging with dexterous hands.

Natasha closes her eyes and melts back into Clint's side with a sigh.

Phil doesn't blame her. Clint's foot rubs are _the best._

"Shotgun," Phil says.

Nat speaks without opening her eyes. "Get in line, old man. You can have one when _you've_ been running ground support in the rain for five days nonstop."

"I just did get in line. With my shotgun."

"Whatever. You jealous?"

"Yes."

"Good." Her eyes slit open. "Barton. You okay?"

Clint blinks and shakes himself. The blank look vanishes from his eyes. His hands, which had frozen in midair an inch above Natasha's ankles, drop to lie lax. "Uh. Yeah. Sorry."

"What's wrong?" It's been a while since Phil's seen him that lost. Was it something they said?

"Nothing."

He injects some iron into his voice. "Try again, Hawk."

"Nothing, it's just… _old man._ "

"Growing old is a rare privilege for a spy. And you're not _that_ old; even _I'm_ not that old, and you're eight years younger than me."

"It's not the age that's the problem," Natasha murmurs, green eyes fixed on Clint's face. "I'm sorry. I should have thought — "

"It's okay," Clint says.

"So what's the problem?" Phil asks.

"Old man. It's a common enough phrase, it's stupid for me to —"

" _Don't,_ " he snaps. Even in the heat of the moment, one thing he won't let Clint get away with is calling himself _stupid_.

"Sorry."

"And stop damn well apologising, Barton."

"Sorry," Clint says again, with a faint grin.

Phil rolls his eyes. "Talk."

"Pietro used to call him that," Natasha says.

"The Maximoff boy? One of Von Strucker's twins?"

"Pietro and Wanda, yeah. Speedy and Mental. They changed sides when — it's not important." Clint picks at a loose thread on his shirt. "I was their recruiting officer, you might say. They were orphans. They imprinted on me. Ducklings, you know."

Phil's aware of the event seven months ago. "He died, didn't he?"

Clint jerks a nod. "In Sokovia, um. I went back to dig a boy out of the rubble. Got him free, turned around to head to the rescue ships, and there was a bot right there with a minigun. Nothing I could do. I was carrying the boy, my bow was over my shoulder, pistol still in its holster… " A muscle tics in his jaw. "I ducked and covered, tried to shield the kid. Heard the guns at my back. Knew I was dead."

"Yet here you are," May says.

"Pietro saved you?" Phil asks.

"He took eight bullets to the chest. For me. It's… it's a debt I can't repay." Clint snorts. "He had time to crack one last smart comment before he died, though. Typical."

"And the name?"

"He was young. Cocky. Eighteen, maybe nineteen. I guess anyone over forty seemed old. He used it as an insult the first time we met; got me shot by a tank. That hurt. Then when they switched sides, he just… kept using it."

"Not so much of an insult by then?"

"Not so much," Clint agrees. He shrugs. "I'm okay. Life goes on, you know? For those of us who're left. I don't like the words _old man_ and I'll die before I let anything happen to Wanda, but apart from that, I'm just peachy."

"Hmm." Phil waits until Clint's hands start moving on Nat's feet, signalling the end of the topic, and then he gives May the nod to get the debrief back on track. "You were saying, Agent May?"

"Ward called you?"

"Oh, that. Yeah." He retrieves the pen from behind his ear and walks it through his fingers. "He called me. On Rosalind's phone. Maybe a minute after she was shot."

"Was she still alive?"

"No." At May's frown, he adds, "Good timing, huh? I'd say he was watching me through his scope. He probably saw her die. Waited for me to… react… and then put the call through."

"And he called you to say he shot her?"

"He called me to gloat." Ward's greeting, such as it was, rings in his head. It spills from his mouth. " _Now you know how it feels, Coulson… to watch someone you care for bleed out right in front of you._ "

It's only after he's said it — and seen Bobbi's frown and Fitz' start of surprise — that Phil realises it might have been nominally his voice, but it was Ward's cadence and vocabulary and tone.

Mimicry runs in the family.

It's just one more thing they share, this team.

He barks a dry laugh. "Rookie. He really thought I'd never had that happen before? That I'd never, _not once,_ in twenty years of highly dangerous field work, had someone bleed to death on me while I tried and failed to _stop_ the bleeding? Hell, remember McCallum?"

"No," says Clint.

"Yes," says May at the same time.

"Of course _you_ wouldn't," Phil says to Clint. "It was before your time, grasshopper."

May smirks. "Must have been almost our first mission together."

"No, it was after Sausalito. We were, what, twenty four? Twenty five? The whole team was young. Inexperienced. The mission was easy, it should've been a walk in the park, but McCallum's gun malfunctioned. Blew his own damn arm off when he pulled the trigger. Nothing we could do about it but watch him die."

"I remember. It wasn't pretty."

"And Ward — " he gulps air, shakes his head in disbelief, "— Ward really thought that tonight was the first time that had happened to me? He's even more delusional than I thought."

"Maybe," says May in a tone that means there's no _maybe_ about it, it's a fact, "he didn't mean just anyone. He's going for the parallel with his own situation: him and Agent 33, you and Rosalind. Both of you watching a woman you care for die in your arms."

"You can say it," Phil says, resigned.

"What, I told you so?"

"No, the other thing."

She eyes him thoughtfully. "I'm not going to say it if it's not true."

He indicates his dishevelled, shell-shocked state with open hands.

"And Ward?"

"You know, I think he really did. Kara Palamas might have started out as just another useful tool to him, but by the end… You saw the camera feed, right? From the factory? He didn't look like someone who'd gotten a flat tire on his car. He look like someone who'd accidentally killed his childhood dog."

"And we all know how much Ward likes dogs," Skye mutters. "Oh, wait, that was probably a lie, too. Like everything else that came out of his stinking mouth."

May ignores the interruption. "You know, Phil, you have a tendency to rationalise your emotions after the event. In _both_ directions, oddly enough."

"I know," he says. He's well aware of it; he's spent years trying to find a balance for the messy aftermath of death. Sometimes he disconnects completely and stops caring in the name of coping. Other times he convinces himself the death meant more than it really did, also in the name of coping. Whichever way he goes, he usually manages to maintain his equilibrium — to outward appearances, anyway.

Not so much this time.

"It's not the same," he says. "He was going for the parallel, but we're not the same. Me and Ward."

"Duh," says Bobbi.

"Go on," says May. The softness is gone from her voice. Once more she projects professional inscrutability.

It's almost a game between them, this: May the hyper-competent interrogator, Coulson the ultra-compliant interrogatee. Both of them pretending they don't care, that they're not discussing the fallout of a very personal attack. Pretending that it's just another day at the office, another routine debrief. That May is enjoying it as much as she always enjoys interrogations. That Coulson is hating it as much as he always hates being on this end of the questions.

They're good at pretending.

Good at deception.

Not so good at deceiving themselves, though. Or even one another.

The number of tangents they're letting each other go down is proof enough of that.

Phil flicks the pen through his fingers, marshalling his thoughts. "Ward thinks it's the same situation. Because, as you said and as _he_ said, we've both watched someone we care for bleed out right in front of us. But it's not. I've never shot anyone with your face, for starters."

May quirks an almost-grin. "Thanks."

"Ward shot Kara Palamas three times in the gut because he thought she was you." He shoots a reflexive glance to Skye and sees May, Simmons, and Fitz do the same. It's been nearly two years since the shooting in Italy, but even so, they're all a little wary of talking gut-shots around Skye. Near-death experiences are traumatic. Not just for the person who nearly died.

For everyone.

Skye's jaw tenses, and maybe she's a shade paler than usual, but that's about it.

He turns back to May. "And he shot Rosalind Price once in the throat because he knew what she meant to me. _He_ shot her — shot both of them. That's where we're different. I don't know, maybe if I'd been the one to shoot Kara and then he'd shot Ros…" He lifts a hand, palm up. "I would say that's fair enough, but it really isn't. No death is fair. There's no such thing as _acceptable losses,_ not even in our business. Death is cheap? No it isn't. It's the most expensive thing there is. There's always a price to pay." He clenches his hand, feels the flex and give of the muscles under the skin, blinks back the memory of slick, wet blood coating the skin. " _Always_."

"We know," Natasha says softly.

Phil takes a calming breath. "I know you do."

Clint looks up from massaging Nat's arches, his eyes intent. "And we know you pay it, Overwatch. You always have."

"Nobody's born a killer." He stares at his hand. Tries to see past the invisible blood stains. "But in this job… it's what we become."

"You didn't kill her."

Phil's eyes close in a pained grimace.

"And that price," Clint says, "the price of killing?" His face crumples a little: maybe in sorrow, maybe in understanding. "You carry that weight with you. We see it every time you pull the trigger. Every time you use a knife or snap a neck. You've never taken death lightly. _Never._ Not when you took the shot yourself, not when you ordered someone else to."

"Chain of command," Phil says, looking across at him. "Responsibility. Some handlers would pass the buck."

"Weasels," says Clint.

"But not you," says Natasha. "Which is why I'm here, incidentally, instead of being dead. Because Clint queried the kill order and you listened to him."

"Exactly," says Clint. "But this? Rosalind Price? You need to let us help. You can't carry this one alone."

"Can't I?"

"No." Clint stares through him. "Phil. If you try… it will break you."

Phil closes his eyes. His shoulders sag. "Been in the business a long time. Maybe I'm already broken."

May snorts. "You don't break that easy, Coulson."

"You call this easy?"

"Compared to red-hot needles in very private places? Yes."

"Physically, maybe," he admits. "But emotionally…"

"Why," says Clint, voice deceptively light, "are you saying it was easier listening to me scream in the next cell over?"

He freezes. "That's… no. No, I'm not saying that."

"Didn't think so. And it was mutual, in case you're wondering."

"But you can't compare trauma like that. Easy, easier, easiest… Emotional pain isn't quantifiable in that way."

"Isn't it?"

"No." Phil opens his eyes and looks at Clint. "You know it isn't. We don't play _my pain is worse than your pain,_ we never have and we never will, is that understood?"

"Understood. But you still need to let us help you."

"I'm trying."

"That's all we're asking."

"Okay then."

And they settle again. Clint goes back to massaging. Natasha half-closes her eyes and hums appreciation under her breath.

May leans forward, elbows on her knees. "You said Ward shot Rosalind because he knew what she meant to you?"

"Yes," says Phil.

"Tell me more about that."


	7. Interrogation III

**I don't own Agents Of SHIELD.**

 **Set during 3.09 Closure.**

 ** _Nature abhors a vacuum; idiom; empty spaces are unnatural as they go against the laws of nature; any empty space must be filled with something._**

* * *

 _7\. Interrogation III_

* * *

"It's obvious, isn't it?" Phil asks. "From what Ward said on the phone."

"You haven't told us what he said yet. Except for that one line. I assume there's more to it than that?"

"Not much more. You said it yourself: _someone I care about bleeding out in my arms._ He knew what she was to me. What she could have been, maybe, given time. And he killed her for it."

"Look. Phil." She hesitates, and _oh please no_ he knows that look. Sympathy from Melinda May is even worse than Simmons' puppy dog eyes. "Isn't it possible that he — "

"No," he says.

"Would you let me finish?"

"No. I already know what you're going to say, and the answer is no."

She crosses her arms and slants an unimpressed eyebrow. "Really."

"Oh, yeah."

"Enlighten me, Agent Coulson."

"You're wanting to say…" He takes a breath and launches into it. "That it's possible he took her out because of who she was rather than because of who I was. Who I am. That I shouldn't be blaming myself for her death because she was the head of the ATCU, which is basically the equivalent of _my_ job — or rather yours, for the next 22 hours — except the ATCU is a highly public organisation whereas SHIELD is not, so a lot more people know about her than know about _me. S_ omeone would've been gunning for her eventually, because that's the nature of jobs like ours, there's always someone wanting to take us out. You want to say that she would have been assassinated regardless of my association with her. You want to say not to blame myself, it's just the survivor's guilt talking, which is perfectly understandable, yes, I know, and I'm feeling it, okay, believe me, I am feeling it. But that doesn't change the fact that _what happened tonight was my fault._ If I hadn't been there tonight, if I hadn't let this whole — _thing_ — with her get out of control, if I hadn't let her grow on me like some sort of irritating and ridiculously attractive fungus, she would still be alive."

"You can't know that certain," May says.

"Can't I?"

"No. You can't. And obviously I don't need to say all that, because you know it already. I would've put it more succinctly," she adds off-hand. "And I'd never use the phrase _gunning for someone._ But the basics were there."

"Anyone would think I'd learned something after thirty years with SHIELD," he says, humour sly and sharp.

"Maybe one or two things."

"She wasn't murdered because of her position with the ATCU. That was the first thing I queried Ward about."

"And he said…?"

"She was murdered because of me. Because of my position with SHIELD."

May raises a skeptical eyebrow. "And you believe that lying son of a dog… why, exactly?"

"Grant Ward's words," Phil says deliberately, "were, I quote, _This is personal,_ unquote. Does that clear things up for you? I'm sorry, I would offer you the recording of the call as evidence, but we seem to be having technical difficulties. Ros's phone wasn't as advanced as mine. Plus, minor hiccup, blood in the circuitry. It's a pain to clean out. You know how it is."

"You didn't mention him saying that before."

"I was getting to it."

"You want to tell us the whole conversation? Save us any more surprises down the track about what he did or said?"

"Sure." Phil sips his coffee — best invention ever, he really needs to give Fitz a raise _—_ and meets her eyes over the rim of his mug. "I'll transcribe it for you later."

May slides her tablet the length of the coffee table. "Or you could transcribe it now."

He doesn't move. They stare each other down. They're both equally unreadable to the uninitiated, and both equally _readable_ to anyone who really knows them.

It's a test, Phil knows. Of course it's a test. A test of his multifunctional capacity, which has always been impeccable, even in multiple languages simultaneously; of his memory under stress, which, ditto; and of his genuine acceptance of her authority here, which…

Okay, she's probably right to wonder about that one.

He's nowhere near Fury's level of My Eyes Only secrecy, but he'll be the first to admit he's kept things from May that he probably shouldn't have.

In his defence, it's been kind of hard to trust someone who got herself voted to the board of a rival SHIELD branch seemingly on a whim. He knows he had her reasons, just like he had his reasons for keeping Theta Protocol from the team. But it's one more secret in a line of secrets. Too many secrets, even — especially — for people who've been colleagues and friends as long as they have. Every lie, every omission, every dodge around the truth just eased the gap between them that little bit wider. What started as a hairline crack was on its way to a yawning fissure before they caught it.

He regrets ever making things so hard for her that she felt she had to leave.

And he hopes she regrets a few of things she did, too. Like keeping the whole Tahiti rigmarole from him.

They're better these days. Not perfect, far from perfect, but definitely better. They're working on the trust issues.

He hopes.

That's the problem with an organisation composed almost entirely of very good spies. Sometimes it's hard to know what they really think.

It's a test. He named her his successor, but does he accept her leadership? Not just over the team, over SHIELD itself, but over _him?_ It's only twenty four hours.

In essence… does he trust her?

"Absolutely," Phil says, putting down his mug and picking up the tablet. "Whatever you say, Agent May. Or would you prefer Acting Director?"

It's a genuine question. He's not one to usurp anyone's authority. Except, on occasion and when needed, his own.

"From you?" she says. "Agent will be fine."

"Sure. And you want the transcription…"

"In English, please."

"I can do Spanish if you'd like. Cantonese. Russian."

"We're American," May says, with all the subtle mockery of someone who's been told the same thing a thousand times herself. "We speak English. And write it, obviously."

Phil throws a look around their circle, encapsulating May (American citizenship, both parents Chinese), Hunter (British citizenship, father English, mother Welsh), FitzSimmons (dual British-American citizenship, both parents Scottish and English, respectively), Natasha (dual Russian-American citizenship, parents unknown), and even Skye (American citizenship, American father, Chinese Inhuman mother). "Oh, yes. American. English. Right."

Her eyes narrow. "Stop stalling."

"I wasn't stalling." He reaches for the tablet and brings up the usual transcription program. Adjusts the keypad to cater to his longer handspan. "Just clarifying."

"Stop clarifying and _write._ "

"Yes, ma'am." Pen tucked behind his ear again, Phil stretches his fingers out, flexes them, and starts typing one-handed, leaving the other hand free to rest on his knee, projecting _relaxed_ and _competent_ as loudly as possible.

But he's always thought better out loud. Transcribing the three-minute conversation with Ward isn't anywhere near enough to tax his mental faculties. He meets May's eyes and says, "I hate that she was shot because of me. _She'd_ hate that. It's so cliche."

"Speaking for the dead now, are you?"

"Remind me which one of us has died, again? Actually legally, medically, physically _died_? If anyone's qualified in that respect, it's me."

Beside him, Clint pats Natasha's feet and rolls her tac pants down to the ankle again. He's finished with the foot rub. "Why's it cliche, boss? Rosalind dying, I mean."

"I'm not your boss." The words are reflexive.

Clint and Natasha turn identical _you're being an idiot but we love you, so we're gonna take a deep breath and be very patient with you while we explain how wrong you are_ looks on him.

"You'll always be our boss, boss," Natasha says.

"No, I mean literally. I'm not Director. Not for the next twenty and a quarter hours."

"You're keeping an awfully close eye on that time, boss," says Clint.

"Says the man who, while piloting a quinjet and administering emergency medical care, once timed a six-hour painkiller stand-down to the second, across four timezones, without having a watch or a phone or any way of actually telling the time."

"Five timezones, actually. Although I can understand your confusion considering your state at the time."

"And you may not be Director," Natasha says, "but you're still the boss. It just happens that May's _your_ boss, now, instead of you being hers."

They grin. In unison.

It's a little scary.

Phil sighs. "Alright, Rumplejerrie. I concede the point. Now knock it off."

"Yes, boss," they chorus.

"Rumplejerrie?" Clint adds. "Haven't heard that one in a while."

"It seemed apropos."

"Rumple-what?" Fitz asks.

"Rumplejerrie," says Simmons. Her eyes light up. "Like — oh! From _Cats?_ "

"Yeah. It pays to have more than one codename, you know. Hawkeye and Black Widow are sometimes too well known. So: Rumpleteazer." Phil points at Natasha. "And Mungojerrie." At Clint.

"And your codename?" Skye asks, badly concealing her mirth behind an _I'm too cool for this_ frown.

"Rum Tum Tugger?" suggests Bobbi, deadpan.

Phil nearly chokes on his coffee.

Clint and Natasha exchange a look.

"No," Phil says, alarmed. "Don't you _dare —_ "

"He's quiet," says Clint.

"And small," says Nat.

"He is — uh, white."

Phil snorts.

"From his ears to the tip of his tail… I mean toes."

A thread of music creeps into their back-and-forth.

"He can creep through the tiniest crack."

"He can walk on the narrowest — dammit," Natasha hisses. " _Rail_ , that doesn't rhyme."

"He can pick any card from a pack."

"He's equally cunning at dice."

"He's always deceiving you — "

"Into believing that — "

"He's only hunting for spies."

"Spies?" Clint shrugs. "Sure, I guess that works."

"Are you done?" Phil asks.

"No."

They sing the finale together. "And we all say, _oh,_ well, I never, was there ever, a cat so clever as magical Mister Mistoffelees."

Skye laughs. "Mistoffelees? _That_ was your code name?"

"Yeah," Phil groans. "Ridiculous, right?"

"I don't know," Mack says thoughtfully. "You do seem to have nine lives."

"Oh he's on number eleven," Fitz says. "I mean the thing with Raina, and, and then the terrigen crystal? Yeah. Eleven. At least."

"Just two," says Natasha with a soft smile.

"Now," says Clint. The pen mysteriously vanishes from behind Phil's ear and reappears in Clint's fingers, spinning silver circles. "Stop getting us sidetracked, Overwatch. Why's it cliche that Rosalind died?"

Phil rubs his free hand over his jaw. Finishes transcribing the last line of tonight's events and starts reading back over it to make sure he hasn't missed anything. "It's not the fact that she died. Everybody dies."

"Some people more than once," May murmurs.

"It's _why_ she died."

"To prove once and for all that Ward's a — " Simmons breaks off at a nudge from Skye. "Sorry."

"Didn't need to prove that," Phil says tiredly. "No, it's the fact that she was murdered just to get back at me. Ward said it himself." He spins the tablet around and sends it skidding up the table to May. "If she'd died on her own terms, been killed because of _her_ job, I think she would've liked that better. But no, she was killed because of me. In the end she was only a pawn on the chess board of Hydra's war with us — but a pawn that had the potential to become a queen. So to speak."

"Ward took her out to stop her becoming the queen?" May asks.

"No. Ward took her out because he thought she was _already_ the queen, and he wanted to cripple the king." Phil frowns. "I don't even _like_ chess."

"So if Rosalind wasn't the queen… who was?"

Gosh. Who's the woman Phil trusts enough to make _director of the entire organisation_ in his mental absence? He looks at her, unblinking. "You'll figure it out."

"You're the king, I assume?"

"If you'll excuse the arrogance in the analogy, yeah. Director's the king — on the white side, at least. Ward…" He hesitates. "I don't know. I don't think he's the black king. A bishop, maybe. He's important, but he's not the _most_ important."

"So who is?"

He shakes his head. "I wish I knew. Gideon Malick? Someone else entirely? It's a dangerous game, making assumptions. There always seems to be someone new."

"Will it cripple you?"

"No." Phil remembers, in the past, sometimes wishing that May was a little less blunt. Or a lot less. Right now, he clings to it like a lifeline. "It won't cripple me. She wasn't the queen. And even if she was, even if I did lose the queen… no. I mean, it might cripple me personally. For a while. But it wouldn't cripple SHIELD. We'd limp on like we always do. Rebuild from ash and dust."

May nods. "Back to what you said before. You don't think Rosalind died on her own terms?"

Ros's words ring in his ears. _I scheduled a meeting with Malick, and that way —_

"She didn't even get to finish her sentence," Phil says. The words emerge bitter. Jaded. Weary beyond belief. "Let alone get to go down fighting. She may not have wanted to go out guns blazing — I don't think that was her style — but she would've wanted the last word. Maybe a bad pun or something, I don't know. The last thing she would've wanted was, well, this."

"Candlelit dinner," May says. "High profile assassination. Someone to hold her while she bled out. I can think of far worse ways to go."

He laughs humourlessly. "Assassinated to provide a white male protagonist with angst and motivation? What's not to love about that?"

"You're not the protagonist. Not the only one, I mean. Everyone's a protagonist in their own mind."

"Really? 'cause last year when Robert Gonzales stormed the base, you got me out safely with the words, _Without you there is no SHIELD._ You're not doing my ego any favours, you know."

"That was then."

"And this is now, I suppose."

"Temporally speaking, yes." The corner of her mouth quirks up as Fitz muffles a laugh.

Phil takes a minute to breathe. "Okay. You have a point. But really, it's not like I needed _more_ motivation. I have enough of my own, thank you very much."

"Motivation for what?"

"Ward needs me to do something." He knows that much. Beyond that… it's a bit murky. He cups his chin in his hand, staring past May with blind eyes. "Something only I can do. I just don't know what it is yet."

"Tell us when you know," Bobbi says. "And we'll help. Deal?"

Easy. "Deal."

"Good," says May. She reaches for the tablet. "Now. About your conversation with Ward…"


	8. Interrogation IV

**I don't own Agents Of SHIELD.**

 **Sorry for the delay in updates! I've been sick. And busy with the launch of my debut novel (Voiceless (Voiceless Duology #1), by E.G. Wilson! It's New Zealand YA Urban Science Fiction, check it out on Amazon, B &N, Fishpond, etc. Guaranteed Zero Love Triangles. The sequel's due for release in October.)**

 **Set during 3.09 Closure.**

 ** _Nature abhors a vacuum; idiom; empty spaces are unnatural as they go against the laws of nature; any empty space must be filled with something._**

* * *

 _8\. Interrogation IV_

* * *

May glances over the document. "If I may?"

"Go ahead."

" _This is personal,_ " she quotes, reading off the screen. " _SHIELD keeps sending its best agents to kill me. Thought I'd stop that from happening again by taking out the guy who keeps sending them._ Ward threatened to cross you off?"

"Yeah. It's weird, I wouldn't have thought that was his style."

"Me neither."

"Bullet to the head at point-blank range, sure. But long range sniping? Nope."

"No. Clearly we were wrong."

"Clearly. But then, if he really wanted me dead…" Phil frowns. A few long-overdue puzzle pieces thud into place. "Surely he would've head-shotted me then and there. He had ample opportunity, I wasn't exactly ducking and covering. No, he wants me alive."

"Why would he?"

"It's something only I can do, it must be. But as for _what,_ specifically _…_? Search me. Last time they tortured me for three days to try to find out about Tahiti. But that was when Garrett was involved. Now? Whoever's in charge… whatever they want… it might be worse than that."

"That's an encouraging thought." May reads on. "And then you… huh. Challenged him to single combat. Apparently."

Phil spreads his hands wordlessly.

"Of course you did," she says.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Come on, Phil. You can hide behind the bureaucratic spy mask all you like. We know you're a chivalrous romantic at heart."

"No, that would be Clint," says Natasha, straight-faced.

"I think you mean Fitz," says Simmons.

There's a moment of silence.

Bobbi snorts. "I'm not putting Hunter's name forward, if that's what you're waiting for."

Phil groans again. "We're like a damn pendulum."

"What?"

"Don't worry. I'll explain later. Of course I told Ward to come and get me. He's gunning for me personally; the sooner I can find him and kill him, the sooner my people will be out of danger."

May cocks an eyebrow. "Your people?"

"My people," he says, waving a hand around the circle and then out to cover the whole base. "Director of SHIELD, you know."

"I know. And… you said _kill_ him? Ward?"

He meets her gaze squarely. "Kill him. Yes."

She holds his gaze, looking troubled. "That's not like you."

"Isn't it?"

"No."

"Let me refer you to my second. Clint?"

Clint shakes his head, frowning. "No. Phil. It's not like you."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. You've never… I mean, violence, yes, it's part of the job. But vengeance? No. Not like this."

"This isn't vengeance. It's self-defence."

Clint leans forward, pen motionless in his hand, eyes dark with worry. "Premeditated murder isn't what I'd call self-defence."

"It's not —" He breaks off. Pinches his nose. "I don't want to kill him for what he did to Ros."

"Don't you?" May says bluntly.

Phil takes a breath.

And the protest dies in his throat.

He stares at her, gut churning, bereft of words.

She nods. "That's what I thought."

He clenches his eyes shut. "I want him to pay. Of course I do." He takes a sharp breath through his nose. "But I won't let that get in the way of — "

"What," says Clint, voice hard. "You want to personally murder your team's former specialist but you won't let that get in the way of personally murdering him?"

"That's not what this is."

"Sure sounds like it is."

"He's coming for me." Phil glares at Clint, jaw set. " _Me_ , okay. Not you, not May, not anyone else. _Me._ If the only way to keep everyone safe is to meet him halfway — "

"It's not."

"You don't know that."

"You need to let us help you. I — Overwatch. _Phil_. I hate to say this, but you're scaring me a little."

"Pain is scary," Phil says without blinking. "That includes emotional pain. But you know that. You watched me die."

Clint shivers. "Yeah, but I can't say I've ever seen you like this. You don't get _violent_ in the name of revenge. You just don't. You work yourself to the bone, you stop sleeping, you move heaven and earth to bring them to justice. _Justice_. Not revenge. You get angry, sure, but I've never seen you murderous."

"I have," says Natasha. She's been watching them closely. It's the first time she's spoken in a while.

"What?" Clint asks.

"I've seen Coulson murderous. Once. It was terrifying."

"How…?"

"You were otherwise occupied," Phil says tightly.

"What the hell do you mean, otherwise occupied?" Clint spits, wide-eyed. "If you were that out of control, I should have been there!"

"That was the problem," says Nat. She brings her legs down to sit crossed-legged and straight-backed in the oversized armchair, still half on top of Clint's knees. "You weren't there. That was why he was so…" she waves a slim hand, "so… lost."

"I wasn't _lost,_ " Phil mutters.

"I don't get it," Clint says. "You handle yourself fine when I'm not around. You're a grown man, you don't need me there to keep you under control — "

"He punched Fury."

Clint's mouth drops. " _What._ "

Phil looks at May, silently asking permission to derail the debrief for a little longer. They might not be on task, strictly speaking, but it's still important. And if nothing else, it's one more lesson in the exquisite fallibility of any person and any system.

May gives him the nod.

Phil looks ceilingward for a moment. It's not something he's proud of, losing control like that. But it was necessary. And it was years ago. "Agent Barton."

"Agent Coulson," Clint returns, shoulders squaring. Stormy blue eyes fix on Phil with laser focus.

Phil returns the gaze with interest. He can pull his scattered thoughts from the door and the stairs and the faint noises in the hallway for this. Clint deserves his undivided attention. "How much do you remember about your solo op to Colombia in November 2008?"

Clint's brows twitch. "Not much. I remember we were short staffed thanks to the mess in Europe plus an outbreak of norovirus. And I remember you were worried about it from the start. You were running four ops at once, right? They needed you more than I did. And Natasha was due to lead a two-day emergency combat course for our theoretical noncombatants, so she couldn't come."

"Go on."

"I took a two-man plane. Got in to the merc base, found the intel. Called you on the way out to update you so you could stop worrying, and they jumped me. Drugged me out of my tree. Everything after that's basically a write off. I woke up in a bed in SHIELD medical with your ugly mug staring at me. You hadn't shaved in four days."

Phil didn't remember _that._ "How is that relevant?"

"Says a lot about your mental state. You can shave in twenty seconds flat, I've watched you do it. Takes a lot to _keep_ you from shaving. Suit, tie, clean shaven, it's all part of the image."

"So?"

"So for you to be unshaven — and with not just one day of stubble, but _four_ — means you'd been under some heavy-duty stress. Like, say, watching an asset come down after he'd been roofied by Colombian drug runners. But even that…" Clint shakes his head. "That wouldn't do it, I don't think. Not by itself. Would it?"

"No. Not by itself."

Clint draws a slow breath. "How bad was it?"

"Bad," Phil says.

Natasha folds one of Clint's hands between her own. Her eyes are fixed with painful intensity on Phil.

"Worse than dying," he adds. "In some ways."

Clint makes a tiny, aborted movement to lick his lips. It's one of the most common tells of nervousness; one that Phil thought Clint had excised from his repertoire long ago. That it's reappearing here, now, in this place, indicates a lot.

"Tell me," Clint says.

Phil reaches out and slips two fingers around the wrist of Clint's free hand. Matches their pulse rates in less than thirty seconds. Clings to the steady _thump-thump_ beneath the pads of his fingers.

"The comm channel was open when they took you," he says, staring with unseeing eyes at the table. "I heard the fight. Heard them get the better of you. Knock you out. There was nothing I could do."

He takes a breath, trying to settle the quivering in his gut. It doesn't work.

"They found your phone. And the earpiece. Listening to them talk, they figured out why you were there, why you had no badge on you, no identification of any sort. They knew you were alone and they knew _exactly_ what that meant for you."

"No one was coming to save me," Clint whispers.

"It was a black op. You knew that going in, of course. It's a part of why I didn't like it from the start, not when you had to go in alone. Tricky political situation, dubious legality… SHIELD couldn't be caught operating there. No one was coming to save you. No one even knew you were there except Nick — and, because you called me, me."

"Luck."

"You could call it that. They knew you'd been talking to someone. Knew that you were either brave or stupid to risk contacting anyone this far in. And they knew the person on the other end couldn't do anything about it." He tightens his grip on Clint's wrist. "They left the line open."

Across the circle, Hunter swears under his breath.

"They took the intel back," Phil says. "And they drugged you to the gills. And they tortured you. For _fun._ "

The room is silent. More silent than silent. A deep well of noiselessness.

"Nothing major, nothing life-threatening. Just enough to _hurt_. I wrapped up four ops in fifteen hours straight while listening to you scream. Or beg. Or laugh. I'm still not sure which one was worse. Spent any spare minute I had on the phone to Nick, trying to get him to give me the green light to go after you."

"And?"

He grimaces. "He wouldn't do it. Wouldn't sanction a rescue op, not for Widow, not even for me. We couldn't be caught operating there. Couldn't risk an extraction."

Mere words couldn't convey the depth of desperation he'd felt. Sleep deprived, ragged at the edges, battered with terrible hope every time Clint's voice or the voice of one of his captors came through the channel… battered with an even more terrible despair when silence filled the void for hours on end. He would have done anything to go after Clint. _Anything._

And Nick Fury, caught in the merciless crossfire of a Director's neutrality and a good friend's concern, couldn't — or _wouldn't_ — sanction an eleventh-hour extraction.

"What Coulson neglects to mention," Natasha murmurs, "is that he'd had four hours of sleep in the two days before he got your call."

"And _after_ I got it," Phil says, "any chance of even a ten-minute nap went out the window."

"I didn't know any of this at the time, of course. I was across the country with a crowd of noncombatants. And Phil, uh, didn't think to keep me in the loop."

"Sorry, Nat."

"But you came," Clint says, shifting in his seat. "Didn't you? Someone got me out, I assumed — "

"I got you out."

"I'm sensing a _but._ "

"Set a record for the number of home-base control ops wrapped up in less than a day. Also a set a record for number of calls to the Director. He still wouldn't sanction it. At sixteen hours and forty three minutes, things changed."

"They got bored?" Skye asks.

"They got bored," Nat confirms. "And we all know that's when things get even more dangerous."

"Up until then," Phil says, "they'd been sending one-way audio. I could hear everything coming through from your end; I couldn't send anything to you. I have my doubts about whether you would have even realised it was me saying it, but that's beside the point. Would've made me feel better."

"I would have known."

"They switched to video."

Bobbi draws a sharp breath.

"Time-delayed. We had no way of telling by how much. They talked to me. Taunted me with what they were doing to you. Showed me. In graphic detail. Oh, and they made some half-hearted attempts at initiating some ransom demands. More for show than anything."

Clint snorts. "You didn't respond, of course."

"I didn't respond." Phil's hand clenches on Clint's wrist. "SHIELD doesn't negotiate with terrorists. Or drug cartels. Even when they've captured one of our best. I watched the videos. Showed them to Nick. When he _still_ wouldn't give the green light, I deleted the feeds, and then hacked into the computer systems and deleted the archived footage and any backups."

"That… doesn't sound legal."

"Oh, it's legal. It just happens to be against SHIELD protocol."

"You went against protocol?"

"I did." Deleting the video feeds was the _least_ of what he'd done. "Nobody else needed to see them. Especially not you."

"And Fury?"

Clint's pulse is strong and steady under his fingers. "Wouldn't budge. I called Natasha. Gave her the run-down. She offered to go with me. Two are better than one, type thing. Nick said he understood where I was coming from and he was worried about you too, but you were a competent agent, blah blah blah, and if you couldn't get yourself out then we stood a piss-poor chance of doing it with just us two. Essentially said he wouldn't risk the integrity of SHIELD for one man, no matter how important you were to me. To us. And if it went south, he'd lose three good agents instead of just one. I, uh." Phil rubs a hand over the back of his neck. "I lost it, I'll admit. Punched him. Stormed off."

"You punched," says Clint, awestruck, "Nick Fury."

"Yeah."

"You idolise the man! Not as much as you idolise Cap, okay, but still. Hell, the guy was your S.O.!"

"He was," Phil acknowledges. "Which means he should have known what I'd do when you were in trouble like that."

Clint's head tilts. "But… I'd been in trouble before."

"Not like this."

"So you punched him and stormed off."

"Yep."

"Coulson. Do I need to give you the talk? _We don't punch people when we feel angry, that's juvenile and immature, and no recruit of mine is going to —_ "

"I get it," Phil interrupts. "Thank you. Why do you think I stormed off? I do respect Nick Fury, more than almost anyone. I hated that I'd lost control to the point of physically hurting him. I didn't pull the punch. It was solid."

"Then what?"

Ah. The _other_ part of the against-protocol stuff. "I took a quintet and flew out to Colombia to retrieve you. Infiltrated the base, extracted you, brought you home. End of story."

For the second time in as many hours, Clint's jaw drops. "You what."

"Oh, and Nick met me on the runway when we got back. Gave me my badge back. I'd, uh, misplaced it. On his desk. Before I left."

 _That_ hits home. "You gave up the badge."

"I did."

"For me."

"For the annoying little brother I'd wanted my whole life? _Absolutely._ "

Clint blinks. "I'm not — "

"We've been over this, Clint." Weariness leaches into his bones. He stifles a yawn. "Blood's got nothing to do with it. Not in lives like ours."

"You got me out," Clint says softly.

"Yes. And then I spent two days supervising your come-down from the drug high. And, as Natasha will no doubt attest, I didn't let you out of my sight for another week."

"You got me out. Even though you had to go against Fury to do it. And break every rule in the book."

He gives Clint's wrist a final squeeze and retracts his hand. "I had a promise to keep. Something about forcibly extracting drugs from your bloodstream if I ever found you under the influence again."

"Yeah. Right."

"Some people are more important than rules."

"But — "

"I'm not discussing it. Not tonight."

Clint nods, accepting that. "Alright. Thank you."

"Welcome." A thought occurs. Spills out of his mouth before he can adequately censor it. "Sometimes I think that's where we went wrong with Ward."

At the far end of the table, May rolls her neck side-to-side to ease the stiffness. "What on earth does Barton have to do with Ward?"

"Pendulums," says Phil, as if that explains everything. It _does_ explain everything, to him. "A better question would be: what _doesn't_ Barton — and Coulson and Fitz — have to do with Ward?"


	9. Interrogation V

**I don't own Agents Of SHIELD.**

 **Delayed. Again. I know. Sorry. I'll put the final chapter up later today to make up for it! :)**

 **Set during 3.09 Closure.**

 ** _Nature abhors a vacuum; idiom; empty spaces are unnatural as they go against the laws of nature; any empty space must be filled with something._**

* * *

 _9\. Interrogation V_

* * *

May crosses her legs, straightening once more into her interrogator pose. "Would you care to explain that, Agent Coulson? You mentioned _pendulums_ earlier tonight, and again just now. What do you mean? And what _does_ Agent Barton have to do with former Agent Grant Ward?"

"Most systems," says Phil, blinking eyelids that feel heavier than they should, "assume a state of entropy. Meaning chaos. Everything starts neat and slowly spirals into disorder."

"With you so far. Go on."

"We're the opposite. Not SHIELD in general, I don't think. But my teams, yeah. I'm not saying it's an instantaneous process. I mean, it's taken years to get to this point."

"What process?"

"Loss of momentum. Homeostasis. Elasticity, resilience. Call it what you will. At its most basic, a loss of momentum and a general increasing tendency toward…" He can't think of the word. He waves a hand toward Clint.

"Homogeneity?" Clint suggests.

"That's the one, thank you. We're like a pendulum. We start out with all these differences, swinging wildly from side to side, every which way, all over the place. But over time we lose momentum. We become more and more like each other. We gravitate toward the intersection of ourselves and other people. Our arcs get smaller and smaller. And one day we will have lost all modicum of difference, of impetus, and we'll be sitting right at the bottom of the arc and we'll be just like everyone else."

Skye shivers. "That sounds cheerful. Not."

"It's only a theory."

"A convincing one," Natasha murmurs. "Unless, chemically speaking, we all combust first."

"Because that's _super_ likely," mutters Clint, rolling his eyes.

Natasha digs him in the ribs.

"As for what Clint has to do with Ward — it's more what Clint has to do with me, and I have to do with Ward. Because the intersection of Clint's arc and Ward's arc? Is one Agent Coulson. Me."

"Explain," May orders.

He blows out a breath. "Do you ever wonder if we're just perpetuating the cycle?"

"No."

"Have you ever imprinted on a recruit?" It isn't talked about, but they all know it happens. Imprinting runs both ways.

He notices how her eyes very carefully _don't_ slide towards Skye. "No."

 _Liar,_ Phil thinks. But he doesn't blame her. She's always been careful about what she says on the record.

"Ever had a recruit imprint on you?" he asks.

"Of course."

"And when they graduated, they probably had a recruit imprint on them, right? It's practically tradition."

"Probably," she says. "Why?"

"Perpetuating the cycle. We become more and more like each other. And we repeat each other's actions over and over. Like recruiting. And imprinting. And breaking rules for the sake of the people we've imprinted on."

"You imprinted on Barton?"

"I thought that was obvious."

"And?"

"I recruited Clint, who imprinted on me and vice versa. He recruited Natasha — with my blessing, admittedly — and, again, they imprinted. Even our method of recruitment was eerily similar: a bullet to the calf, followed by swift first aid and a long lecture. It's a blasted Master-Padawan chain, no matter who's involved. He's gone on become Recruitment Manager for the Avengers, you know. Just like I've been recruiting for SHIELD overall."

"I learned from the best," Clint says. "Meaning you, Master Kenobi."

Phil blinks. It doesn't surprise him that Clint's thought about this; it _does_ surprise him that he's decided Phil is — "Kenobi? Really?"

"Diplomat, warrior, knows the rules inside out and breaks them on very rare occasions? Yes."

"That would make Fury… yeah, okay, maverick, I see your point."

"Unfortunately, it also makes me Anakin."

"Maverick again," Phil says with grin. "Just don't go dark side on us and we'll be fine."

A thought occurs, and the grin widens. The analogy fits better than most of the team knows. Both Clint and Anakin had rocky childhoods; they're both natural loners with very close bonds to a very few people; they both had spectacular anger issues when they were younger; and they both have hidden families.

May clears her throat. "And Ward? Leaving Star Wars out of it, if you don't mind."

She's always been more of Trekkie.

Phil grimaces. "John Garrett recruited Ward. And he was Ward's S.O., which usually isn't allowed but I suspect he pulled some strings. Maybe got Fury involved — Nick was Garrett's S.O. And my S.O, too. Ironic, huh?"

"Is it?" The question is clearly rhetorical.

"Garrett and Ward, Ward and Skye, Skye and… Joey? I guess. Although the circumstances are different there. Maybe there's hope for us yet. And with any luck you broke the cycle yourself, May. When you took Skye on after Ward betrayed us, murdered Eric Koenig, Victoria Hand, Tim Jones, and Daniel Danielson, and freed John Garrett from custody."

Skye shifts uncomfortably in her seat. Simmons presses in beside her, offering wordless comfort. That's one thing Phil's found to be grateful for: in all the double-crossing that went on, friends backstabbing friends, adopted family turning out to be lying bastards, at least he hadn't had the grief of finding out his S.O. was a Hydra sleeper agent.

Garrett was bad enough. He and Phil had been friends for a long time.

Ward was worse. Knowing that they'd had a Hydra agent in their team, under their noses, eating and sleeping and laughing with them for the best part of a year… it gave Phil the shivers.

But Fury? Even if he hadn't been Director, Nick Fury turning out to be Hydra would have broken them.

Not just Phil.

All of them.

Nick hadn't only been Garrett and Coulson's S.O. The man had taken on a _lot_ of new agents over the years. Tens. Dozens. More than that, maybe.

"Ward hadn't been doing his job properly anyway," May says. "I don't know if you've compared the records of her progress under him and her progress under me…"

"Of course I have," Phil says. "She's halved her milestone times since you took over. But she was Ward's first recruit. She'll be your… what, fifth?"

"Sixth."

"You'd had experience as a Supervising Officer. He hadn't. Plus, he was young; Skye's not. Uh." He fumbles momentarily. "He probably got distracted. Is what I mean."

"Smooth, A.C." Skye smirks.

"And Fitz?" May asks.

"What?"

"You said _Barton and Coulson and Fitz and Ward._ Where does Fitz fit into it?"

Phil rubs his temple. Darts a glance at Fitz. He has to be careful what he says here. "Perpetuating the cycle," he says again. "We take kids in. Try to give them a home, you know. It's how the system is designed, it's _why_ we imprint on our R.O.'s and S.O.'s and ducklings. I guess I always thought it might be enough. But Ward…" He shakes his head. Seeks out May's gaze. "Where did we go wrong?"

"We didn't," she says. "He did."

"But if we'd caught it early enough — "

"What, you mean if you'd been his Recruiting Officer instead of Garrett? If we'd found him even before that, before he was in juvie? No. Some kids are just born bad."

"Careful, Agent May," Phil says, stifling a grin. "Dangerous ground. It's not a good night to be debating original sin."

Mack looks between them, confusion clear. Phil contains an eye roll with an effort. Mack's a good guy, but he's far from having a monopoly on critical thought and religious reasoning.

"What Ward did," May says. "That's not normal behaviour. You know he tried to burn his family's house to ground."

"I also know his father neglected him and his brother flat-out abused him both physically and emotionally." There are parallels in any family — even adopted ones. He doesn't look at Clint. "It's not an uncommon story in SHIELD. Or in the military. Or in any other organisation like ours. Hell, it's practically _why_ we recruit those kids."

"Why, because they're already broken?"

"No. Because they've got less to lose. They know how to survive, they know what it's like to create a family of choice. They're the lucky ones, in a way." And now he knows he's tired, far too tired for this, because he has to fight to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "They've never had to walk away from their own flesh and blood in the name of keeping them safe. Never had to find out about the funeral from a memo passed from department to department for the last six months."

He meets Simmons' eyes, sees the flash of pain there. It's been hard on her, he knows. Of them all, she's the one most attached to the life she's left behind. The normal life.

Clint straightens. "Your mother died?"

"Yeah," Phil says. "When I was in Tahiti. I died, she died, and then, surprise, I wasn't dead after all."

"I'm sorry, man. I would've been there. If I'd known."

"I know."

"Even if you had been dead."

"I know," he says again. Clint and Nat going to his mother's funeral without him is not something he wants to think about. "Thanks."

"You'd rather we used different recruiting methods?" May asks.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because in the end, it doesn't matter. It's why any biological family we've got left is dead, or they think _we're_ dead, or they're estranged or hidden away somewhere or they haven't heard from us in years. All the paths come out to the same end. However SHIELD finds us — a college student trying to support a sick mother, an Intelligence Agency brat shifting from base to base, a foster kid from St Agnes' living in a van on the street — " he motions to himself, May, and Skye in turn, "— it doesn't _matter._ We make our family where we find it."

" _We are all of us lost_ ," Clint recites softly. " _The best we can do is make whatever we're lost in as much like home as we can._ "

"Clearly Ward didn't get that memo," Skye mutters. But Phil catches the quick, curious dart of her eyes to May. She hadn't known about May's background? Interesting. Not unpredictable — May's always been private, even rivalling Phil in that respect — but interesting.

"It's not a job," says May. "It's a lifestyle."

"Exactly," Phil agrees.

"And Rosalind?"

Of course she knew his thoughts had swung back around to Ros. "I don't know," Phil says simply. He's got nothing. No energy. No conviction. It'll come back. But for now… he's drained. "You always said dating civilians never turns out well."

"And then I married Andrew," she says. "Which was fine. Until Bahrain."

"Yeah. I'm sorry." He's not talking about Bahrain, and she knows it. "That I didn't tell you I was seeing him."

Beside him, Clint wolf-whistles.

Phil ignores it.

"Phil." May looks pained. "You didn't have to tell me."

"Maybe not, but I should have. He's your ex-husband."

"He was your therapist," she returns. "I was married to him for five years, I know all about client confidentiality."

"You know why we don't get involved with civilians, too, huh."

"He understood."

"But he didn't approve."

"No."

Andrew had always seen the problems in the system. Had always had trouble looking past them.

"I thought… with Audrey… But that didn't work. Postmortem relationships aren't the best. It wouldn't have been fair on her. And Rosalind…" Phil frowns. "I thought we had a chance. She wasn't a civilian. Not any more than I am. But she wasn't a SHIELD agent either."

"Does that matter?"

"Yes."

"Relationships down the hierarchy are against SHIELD protocol."

"Within the same team," he says. "Like you and Ward. Which I turned a blind eye to. You're welcome."

"You're the Director." The words would be gentle coming from anyone else. "It's all the same team. Why do you think Fury was perpetually single?"

"Because he's Fury."

She concedes that with a nod.

"I'm not Fury." He shifts his weight and settles again. Draws the conversation back onto firm ground. They need to wrap this debrief up before he crashes fully. "No, I made a mistake. Tonight. For the record."

May leans forward. "What do you mean?"

"I forgot." He stops. Starts again. "No, that's not true. I _ignored_ the fact that Rosalind Price wasn't a SHIELD agent. She'd done years of undercover work, yeah, but she'd never been a field agent. She's not like us; she doesn't see a threat in every open doorway and exposed pane of glass, a weapon in every knife and pen and candle. I never saw her make sure the room was clear before she relaxed. She didn't check the delivery guy's ID, she hardly even locked her doors when she drove."

"Some would say that's a good thing. That she wasn't paranoid."

"In our line of work?" He shakes his head, too exhausted even to laugh. "You're either paranoid or you're dead. I'll give you two guesses as to which one she is — and you won't need the second."

"Okay. So?"

"So it was my job. To clear the room, to lock the doors, to do all the thousand and one things that we do every second by instinct. But tonight — " he draws a sharp breath through his nose, "— tonight I failed. If I'd just closed the damn curtains — "

"If you'd closed the curtains," May says steadily, "it wouldn't have made a difference. Ward would have marked your position beforehand. Or used thermal imaging. Or tracked the GPS on her phone, or done a dozen other things. She'd still be dead, Phil." She stares him down, unblinking. "You need to understand that. You can't bring her back. Nobody can."

He snorts. "Yeah, only Nick can resurrect people. And I'm not him, I know. I wouldn't wish _that_ on anyone."

"Not even Ward?"

"Well, I suppose it might save us some trouble if he begs us to let him die." The echo of his own words come back to him, _please let me die let me die let me die please,_ and he shudders. "No. Not that. Not even on him."

"You know, they say mercy is the mark of a great man."

"Mercy?" This time he _does_ laugh. "This isn't mercy. Mercy would be letting him die, giving him a quick and clean death."

"What's your plan, then?"

"I don't have one." He cocks his head to the side, stares blindly past May. The movement feels familiar in a strange way. Like someone else borrowing his skin. "Not yet. But I will."

He anticipates the movement more than sees it, and catches Clint's hand an inch from making contact with his arm. Blinks. "I'm here. And I'm exhausted. Can we wrap this up?"

Simmons and Skye are nodding off, heads drooping together on the couch. Fitz is making a valiant effort at staying awake, but his eyes are half-closed. Mack and Hunter and even Bobbi are looking weary.

It's been a long night.

Natasha and Clint are quiet but alert. Nat's curled into Clint's chest, her head in the crook of his shoulder, his arm around her back. They watch him watch them without saying a word.

"Last question," says May. She glances at the transcript. "Ward said, _I just wanted to hear the panic in your voice before you died._ That was the last thing he said?"

"Yes."

"What happened then?"

"I died," Phil says, deadpan.

May eyeballs him.

"Oh, no, sorry, that was 2012. Wrong year. Correction for the record: I didn't die."

She waits. It's a very _deliberate_ wait.

"Ward's ground assault team stormed the place." They all know debriefs can cause certain reactions to resurface. Associative memories, and all that. Phil can't stop the dart of his eyes to the stairs, the doors, the kitchen at the far end of the room, now shrouded in darkness. "One point guard with a tail, two-man reinforcement team, another two at the elevator, and at least two more on the street. Probably four on the street, but I can't be sure. Agent — sorry, _Acting Commander_ Mackenzie? You extracted me. How many did you see?"

"Two on the street engaging you," Mack says. "One guarding the back door. One at the corner of the street. Probably a few more around the front of the building, but that's conjecture."

"Conjecture wins battles," murmurs Clint.

"Or gets people killed."

He tips his head, acknowledging the point.

"You fought your way out?" asks May.

"I may have gone to ," says Phil mildly, "but I'm still a field agent." It's an old joke. "Yes. I fought my way out."

"Academy of Communications has nothing to do with it." Is that _fear_ in May's eyes? Surely not. He can handle himself, and she knows it. "There were a lot of them, Phil. And they didn't sound like new recruits."

"Sure. They were good. But I was… better."

"Want to give us the play-by-play?"

He's always hated that phrase. "I'll summarise. I knocked the gun out of the point guard's hand and engaged in a close-quarters brawl. It was messy. Inelegant. I really am Kenobi, aren't I? Damn."

Natasha chokes on a laugh.

"Used Number One as a shield when the next guy burst in. He took four bullets to the back. Another two went in the ceiling when I forced Two's arm up. His pistol went flying, I don't know where. I knocked him out." He brushes a light finger over the bruised knuckles of his flesh hand.

"You didn't have a gun on you?"

"I did, but it was over the far side of the room. Didn't have time. Plus…" Phil holds up his prosthetic hand. "It's fine when the gun's already primed. But loading and setting the magazine still takes too long."

She nods.

"I knew Ward wouldn't have stopped at two. Heard noises outside. Set up a distraction — candles and an aerosol can — grabbed One's gun and waited for the next guys to show up. Shot Three and Four dead while they were watching the fireworks, went down the hall and nearly copped a bullet to the face from the two at the elevator. I shot Number Five, winged Six, and decided a strategic retreat was in order. Took a shortcut to the street."

"And by _shortcut_ you mean — "

"I went out the window, yeah. Hence all the glass you had to dig out of me. Two storey drop, landed hard on a pile of rubbish bags. I'll be feeling it tomorrow."

"Better than being dead," she says dryly.

"Being dead didn't hurt. Speaking from experience."

"Didn't hurt _you,_ maybe."

"Point. Sorry. Anyway. I went out the window. Took cover behind a dumpster, held off the guys on the street while I waited for extraction. Shot Number Seven. Mack turned up a minute later in the SUV and laid down covering fire. Extraction was a success, and here we are." He yawns. "Sorry."

"Stop damn well apologising, Overwatch," Clint says.

Phil slides him a look that is both unimpressed and quietly amused, and turns back to May. "Anything else you want to know?" He should know if there is, he's done enough debriefs, but right now his brain is fried.

The corner of May's mouth tucks downward in a gentle negative. "That's everything for the initial report. Might need a follow-up in the next couple of days; we'll see. But for now? No. We're done here. Acting Director May declaring this debrief closed at thirteen minutes past midnight on January 23rd, 2016." She shuts off the audio recorder on her phone, stops the video camera, and says, soft but firm, "Get some rest, Phil."

Rest. That's funny. Every muscle aches with exhaustion, his limbs are weighed down with tiredness, but his mind churns, skittering from one thought to the next while his eyes seek out the shadows and exits of the room. It's like a bad case of jet lag from the years before he learnt to hit seven time zones in two days without missing a blink. His body craves sleep while his mind burns with energy.

"He will," Clint says.

Phil looks around the circle. Meets the eyes looking back, his team openly worried or shocked or angry, sympathetic, fatigued by turns. "Thank you," he says. The words aren't much. But they're all he has to offer. And he means every morae and chroneme of them.

May tilts her chin at him, just a fraction, and he nods. "We'll start individual talks at 0700. Mack — "

"Yeah," says Mack. "I'm on it."

Phil had already told him to get the interrogation room ready.

"Dismissed," May orders. "Go to bed."

Slowly, reluctantly, the room empties. May slips out last of all, taking the stairs up to the office.

And Phil is left alone with Clint and Natasha.


	10. Restoration

**I don't own Agents Of SHIELD.**

 **Final chapter, here we go! :)**

 **Set during 3.09 Closure.**

 ** _Nature abhors a vacuum; idiom; empty spaces are unnatural as they go against the laws of nature; any empty space must be filled with something._**

* * *

 _10\. Restoration_

* * *

They sit in silence for a few minutes: Phil because he's too exhausted to even think about talking, let alone moving, and the other two… okay, he doesn't know why Clint and Natasha don't speak. They're holding a silent conversation with each other, he can tell that much. The silence is too deep. Too meaningful. And it's punctuated by the odd whisper of air moving when one of them reinforces a point with a hand signal.

He braces his elbows on his knees and drops his head into his hands. Lets himself rest in the darkness, still and silent and blessedly free of questions. He's not sorry they held the debrief tonight. No matter what May's reservations might have been. He might be reeling from the shock — he _is_ reeling from the shock — but grief, for him, has always been something like a blister. The sooner he lances the wound and lets it all gush out of him, the sooner he can start to heal.

The debrief was many things. Uncomfortable, yes, and not just for him. Painful, yes, for all involved. Longer than it should have been, maybe. Awkward in places, undoubtedly.

But also very, _very_ necessary.

He's not infallible. He knows this.

SHIELD itself is not infallible. The shindig with Hydra proved that, if nothing else.

But sometimes he wonders if, down here in their frankly awesome secret underground base, they maybe start thinking they're impenetrable. Imperturbable. Irreproachable. And a lot of other words ending in -able.

Possibly even insufferable.

Hopefully not discoverable, though.

And definitely not irreparable.

Death hurts. A lot. But the survivors limp on.

Sometimes even… not the survivors.

What he told May was the truth. He wouldn't wish the Tahiti procedure on anyone. Not his friends. Not his enemies.

Not even former SHIELD agent Grant Douglas Ward, young upstart that he is.

The warning whine at the back of his mind grows louder. He blinks into the darkness of his hands and tenses at the sound of quiet movement beside him. "Talk. Please." They'll understand. Too many years on comms-only missions. Sight, touch, hearing, they're all linked, but they have their priorities, too.

"I'm just going to check the doors," says Clint, soft and low. His voice moves away towards the corridor. "The team closed them on their way out, but it never hurts to check. Are we going to get interrupted here, do you think? I can lock them."

It's an effort to think. The gap between question and answer lingers. But there's no impatient sigh from Natasha, no prompting from Clint. They're giving him space.

"No," he says finally. "We won't be interrupted."

May will have access to the cameras. She'll warn off anyone who thinks it's a good idea to barge into the director's common room in the middle of the night.

It's not like they don't have _other_ common rooms. Other kitchens and lounges and widescreen tv's with gaming consoles and surround sound. His team just happen to prefer this one. Probably because it's closest to his office. They're staking their claim, in a way. _He might be your director but he's our team lead._

It shouldn't make him feel better, not really. He shouldn't encourage the elitism. Directors don't play favourites.

But it warms him inside anyway. Just a little.

"Don't lock the doors," he adds. "We're safe here."

"Yes," says Natasha, all glittering steel certainty under wry humour. "We are."

"We've got you," Clint says.

Phil knows. Adrift in a vast ocean of grief, that's one thing he clings to beyond doubt. They've got him. They've got him. He's safe.

But all the same, the warning in his mind reaches a fever pitch. He takes his hands from his face and pivots in his seat to stare with red-rimmed eyes at the doors.

They're closed. Like Clint said.

Stairs? Empty.

May's the only one up there, anyway. And he can trust her.

He sweeps his gaze around the room, taking in the shadowy far reaches of the darkened kitchen, the closed door of the bathroom under the stairs, that tricky corner behind the bookcase where no-one ever bothers to clean and as such it's slowly accumulating a pile of assorted books/food wrappers/items of clothing/spare cables/dirty mugs/whatever.

The room is clear.

The jittering under his skin settles. It won't be for long, he knows. He'd thought the debrief would help that. The presence of his team. The company of Clint and Natasha, Agents Barton and Romanov, the only people in the world who are both a) highly competent assassins working for SHIELD, and b) close enough and trustworthy enough to be called his family.

Although, if he thinks about it, May could be on that list, too.

He doesn't think about it.

"Overwatch," says Clint, sounding like it's far from the first time he's tried to get Phil's attention.

Phil jerks his gaze back to Clint. "What?"

"There he is." Nat grins. It doesn't reach the disquiet in her eyes. She stands from the armchair, carrying the movement through into a full-body stretch. "Do you want to move to the couch?" It's only half a question, and the half-question is more than ninety percent rhetorical.

He doesn't bother verbalising a reply. Just climbs wearily to his feet, sways on the spot, and accepts Clint's arm around his back to make it the short distance to the sofa.

It's a very nice couch. Probably the most comfortable couch in the whole Playground, not that he's had the time or inclination to try all of them out. It's dark grey leather, slightly distressed. A tiny bit sagging on the left hand side, in the corner that provides the best line of sight to three doors and the stairs. Worn down in all the usual places, but with years of hard use still in it.

Much like him, really.

He really needs to stop anthropomorphising things to fit his headspace. It's a bad habit.

"You want the middle?" Clint asks.

Phil turns a forbearing eye on him and drops to sprawl on the middle seat of the sofa, arms outstretched along the back. He tips his head in invitation.

A second later he's got a black-clad assassin ensconced on either side of him. For the second time tonight he notes the lack of logos, SHIELD or Avengers or otherwise, on their gear. It reminds him of the time someone — he remembers lean cheekbones and a shadow of what was probably supposed to be designer stubble but in reality just looked sad, but he doesn't remember a name — suggested in passing that they stick a logo on the couch since they like it so much.

"'Cause it's, you know, black and leather, and most of our stuff is black and leather, and…"

The kid had petered off into thunderous silence at the look on his face, stammered some excuse, and fled the room.

Phil likes the logo, he can't deny that. It was fine when they were above ground, literally and figuratively. But they're a damn _secret_ organisation now. They don't even have the official sanction of the US government to be operating on home soil, let alone that of any other government around the world.

Expect maybe Australia. But that's a special case. Always has been.

So no. He'll accept the logo on their plane and offical jackets and whatever else they need. Hell, he'll even accept SHIELD-branded pens, because the things are useful and every so often he strikes one that never runs out of ink. Ever. He's still got the one Nick Fury gave him to sign his recruitment form three decades ago.

But he draws the line at sticking it on a couch.

"Coulson," says Natasha. Once again, he's pretty sure it's not the first time she's said it.

"Yeah," he rasps. "Sorry."

"You don't need to — " she says.

"Would you stop — " says Clint at the same time.

Phil drops his hands from the back of the couch to grip their shoulders. The protests halt.

"You're shaking," Nat says with a frown.

So he is. "Oh." It doesn't seem important.

She takes his chin between gentle fingers and turns his head toward her, studying him. The frown deepens. But she doesn't say anything.

She doesn't have to.

Phil knows he's going downhill. Fast. The debrief may have helped stave off the worst of the effects for a while, but he knows — or he should have known, under the layers of adrenaline and shock and hyper-vigilance — that delaying it never helps. Not really.

But it was necessary.

"Come here," Natasha murmurs. She curls a hand around the back of his neck and tugs him down to rest on her shoulder. Wraps a warm arm around his back.

He can feel it now: the shivering. Like the tingle of hypervigilance in his veins has spread out onto the surface of his skin, raising goosebumps and forcing a far-too-visible reaction.

It's not like the blood and the scrapes and the expression on his face weren't _visible reaction_ enough.

But he can't bring himself to care. It's dangerous, he knows, stupid and dangerous, because if he can't even control his own body then what _can_ he control? But he Just. Can't. Care.

He's got nothing left.

So he rests his head on Nat's shoulder, winds a shaking hand into her jacket, and stares blankly past her at the wall. His eyes ache, dry and hot. The pounding behind his temples grows. The marrow of his bones feels like it's been sucked out and replaced with lead.

Every breath hurts.

Clint's hand grips his shoulder. A calloused thumb rubs circles at the nape of his neck.

"It's okay, Phil. You can let go. There's no shame in it. Like me in Manila, huh? Let it go."

Manila. Where Clint had made his first extraction call in almost two years. Natasha was closest; she found Clint and his doctor. Got them safely in the air. And Phil had watched through the quintet cameras, helpless from half a world away, while Clint sobbed into Nat's shoulder, worn thin by a months-long deep cover op that had started with biochemical manipulation and only gotten worse.

"You're safe here," Clint says. "We're safe. Let go."

 _Let go. You did good. Let the girl go._

Nausea burns in his gut, in his throat.

 _Safe_.

Phil shudders, the memory of his own words rearing up to stab and rip and tear. _You're going back in to the ATCU?_ _I can't protect you in there._

He couldn't even protect her in her own home.

 _I don't need your protection._

Well. She certainly didn't _now._

Unless maybe from grave robbers.

He huffs a laugh that emerges perilously close to hysterical. Behind Nat's shoulder, the brick wall blurs. His breath hitches. The stinging at the back of his eyes intensifies and overflows, hot and wet and cleansing.

And he lets go.

On some level he's aware of Natasha rubbing a hand across his back, palm scrubbing with precision over the seam of the scarred entry wound, even though he could swear there's no way she can feel it under the double layer of clothing. On some level he's aware of Clint warm and solid at his back, the grounding touch on his shoulder, the soft words.

"It's okay, we've got you. We've got you. We won't let you fall. Let go, okay. Trust us. We'll get through this."

On another level it all fades into the background, and he sees nothing but the apartment, a pool of bright light in the darkness —

 _out of the darkness, into the light_

And hears the tinkle of breaking glass, and smells the metallic tang of new blood —

 _breathe Ros just breathe for me, stay with me stay with the sound of my voice, breathe please breathe please breathe_

And feels the blood gush between his fingers, vivid red against the paleness of his human hand.

He doesn't think the stains will ever come out. No, that blood is here to stay.

Her blood is on his hands.

His hands… and Ward's.

Something snaps inside him. Whatever it is, it's both terrible and wonderful, awe-inspiring and world-shattering.

Maybe this is his terragenesis. His baptism. Transformation. Renewal.

His Bahrain.

Between one breath and the next, a tidal wave searing as fire and sharp as ice floods his veins. The storm of shock and grief and anger crystallises into a lens, funnelling the howling turmoil into a single thought, a single focus.

A single name.

 _Ward._

He must have made a noise or moved or, hell, maybe his heart rate just changed minutely, because Natasha eases back, looks at him, and says, "You're crashing hard, huh, boss?"

Sure. That's as good an excuse as any. Plus it has the advantage of being true. Burning purpose can't negate total physical and emotional exhaustion, no matter how hard he tries.

So he lies down properly on the couch and lets them fuss over him. They slip a cushion under his head where it rests on Nat's lap, and drape a blanket over him, and then Clint tugs off his boots and socks and starts massaging with gentle thoroughness.

One last thing, and then he can sleep.

"Hawkeye," Phil manages, blinking heavy eyelids.

"Yes, sir?" The words are soft, very nearly a drawl, but deferential nonetheless. Concerned subordinate to superior officer. Little brother to big brother.

"You're good to take night watch?"

The corner of Clint's mouth quirks. "Affirmative. Widow and I will alternate."

"You're safe here," Nat says. One hand smooths the blanket across his shoulder while the other rests on the arm of the sofa, gleaming pistol at the ready. "We've got you, Overwatch. Go to sleep."

"Copy that." Phil reaches for her hand. Squeezes it in silent thanks, and shivers, and sleeps.

* * *

Movement wakes him just before six o'clock. He rolls and comes up to a crouch, groping for the knife strapped to his thigh. He's aware of Clint perched on the back of the sofa to his left, arrow on the string, bow drawn. Natasha's still slumped in the corner to his right. She'd appear asleep to the casual observer, but he knows her eyes will be slitted, her finger ready on the trigger.

"It's just me," says May, stepping down into the common room. She looks like she's just had a solid eight hours of sleep. In reality, Phil knows, she would have been lucky to snatch even one. "Delta, you've got a call out. Coulson, the kids will be here in an hour."

Without a word, Natasha grabs her bag and vanishes in the direction of the bathroom. Clint grunts, lays a hand on Phil's arm in silent good-morning, and shuffles down to the kitchen. It's not hard to guess where he's going: they keep a pot of filter coffee percolating at all hours, and whoever empties it had better damn well refill it, on pain of _everyone's_ displeasure.

"Barton," May adds, "drink straight out of the coffeepot again and I'll do something unmentionable to your unmentionables."

Clint yawns hugely, flips the bird over his shoulder at her, and reaches for the coffeepot.

And drinks from it.

"That's disgusting."

He shrugs unconcerned acceptance and, pot in hand, turns to the pantry in search of food.

May looks at Phil. Gives him a slow once-over, dissecting and analysing and piecing together again. She's not fool enough to ask how he is.

The storm's still there, a grief that clamps down with an iron fist and twists until he can hardly breathe. He can feel it lingering just below the surface. But layered over the top is a lightness, a swiftness. A surety of purpose. His burning resolution. Conviction on a level he hasn't felt since before Providence.

 _We are not agents of nothing._

He nods tacit acknowledgement and steps past May. There are a few changes of clothes upstairs in the private bathroom, including, if he's not mistaken, a clean shirt. Black. Blacker than black.

Phil's team will be here soon. Ready and waiting for questioning.

Ward needs him — and he needs Ward.

Which means he needs to get inside Ward's head.

He leaves Clint and Nat to their preparations, leaves May to her worry and her responsibilities, and goes to clothe himself in death.


End file.
